and it s a carbon sink sequestering the carbon dioxide it absorbed during growth even after it s been turned into lumber.
Waugh Thistleton estimates that the wood in Stadthaus stores 186 tons of carbon while the steel and concrete for a similar conventionally built tower would have generated 137 tons of carbon dioxide during production.
When CLT is used to build high-rise towers the carbon savings can be enormous. The 186 tons of carbon locked into Stadthaus are enough to offset 20 years of its daily operations meaning that for the first two decades of its life the building isn t carbon neutral t is actually carbon negative.
Rather than producing greenhouse gases Stadthaus is fighting them. While firms like Waugh Thistleton have focused on the lower end of the high-rise scale others are designing radically taller buildings up to 40 or more stories.
If that unassuming building on a street corner in Shoreditch is actually a trap for hundreds of tons of carbon imagine an entire city of Stadthauses.
So they designed a shell for a quadrotor that incorporated shock absorbers ubber dampers in between sections made from carbon fiber and plastic.
Both provide valuable ecosystem services buffering floods storing atmospheric carbon and building soils. Both are in decline nationally and globally.
whether the change will affect coastal ecosystems'ability to store carbon; and whether juvenile fish and commercially valuable shellfish will remain abundant in the changing plant communities.
#Big data project reveals where carbon-stocking projects in Africa provide greatest benefitsit is recognized increasingly that climate change has the potential to threaten people
One way to slow climate change is to increase the number of trees On earth as they through photosynthesis take up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide converting it to carbon products
New forests continue to accumulate carbon for hundreds of years. Therefore forestation projects are one way of generating'carbon credits
'which are tradable units on the carbon market. The more carbon is stored in the vegetation the more profitable such projects are.
Restoring forests should bring especially high carbon returns in areas where plants grow fast and to big sizes but where past disturbances such as deforestation fires and degradation have resulted in much of the vegetation being destroyed because the difference between
what is there and what could potentially be there is so large. However little information exists on where such areas are
and how big their carbon storage potential is. Researchers from Aarhus University Denmark the University of Pretoria South africa and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South africa have developed now a method to calculate the difference between the potential carbon that could be stored in vegetation
if there were no disturbances and the carbon that is stored currently in vegetation in tropical Africa.
The researchers based their analysis on a satellite-derived map of current carbon being stored in vegetation.
Combining it with data on environmental factors that affect plant growth such as climate and soil they could model the maximum amount of carbon that could be stored in vegetation across tropical Africa.
By subtracting the actual amount of carbon currently stored in vegetation from this they could
thus show where in Africa carbon-stocking projects would be particularly profitable. People and biodiversity factors are also importantin reality such a map of where most carbon could be stored is limited probably of use for deciding where to plan carbon projects
because there may be a number of constraints to setting up forestation projects to stock carbon.
For example a densely populated agricultural area with high levels of rainfall and temperatures might bring high carbon returns;
however it would be unlikely to be profitable as land value in these areas is high
and because it would be problematic to have to relocate people. Therefore such constraints must be considered
when planning carbon forests. In addition it might be a good idea to consider whether there are wider benefits to setting up such projects.
We used our map which showed where carbon forests would bring high returns to ask where carbon-stocking by forestation would
not only be highly profitable but where it would also minimize conflict with people and benefit biodiversity and people says Michelle Greve from the University of Pretoria who led the project as part of her Phd at Aarhus University.
which would not only have high carbon returns but would also conserve native biodiversity and support ecosystem services that is services that the environment provides which benefit humans.
thus identify areas where carbon projects would have wider co-benefits. An example of an area that showed high carbon returns
but was less important when these other factors were considered was the region around Lake victoria in East Africa.
and thus has a high potential for carbon stocking through forests. However it does not support as high biodiversity as some other areas
So setting aside land here to plant carbon forests would not be optimal. Rather regions of the Upper Guinean rainforests of West Africa and the Lower Guinean rainforests which are situated on the coast of Nigeria
and Cameroon were identified as having more optimal combinations of high carbon stocking potential high co-benefits for wildlife conservation and humans and high feasibility.
Our project aims to clearly quantify environmental services such as water flow carbon storage and biodiversity conservation that decision makers will consider as they evaluate projects from forest restoration to watershed management said Jefferson Hall Smithsonian staff scientist and project director.
The cellulose nanocrystals represent a potential green alternative to carbon nanotubes for reinforcing materials such as polymers and concrete.
With this in mind cellulose nanomaterials are inherently renewable sustainable biodegradable and carbon-neutral like the sources from
Globally pork produced 24 kilos of carbon per kilo of edible protein and poultry produced only 3. 7 kilos of carbon per kilo of protein--compared with anywhere from 58 to 1000 kilos of carbon per kilo of protein from ruminant meat.
The authors caution that the lower emission intensities in the pig and poultry sectors are driven largely by industrial systems
and Sudan can in the worst cases release the equivalent of 1000 kilos of carbon for every kilo of protein they produce.
By comparison in many parts of the US and Europe the emission intensity is around 10 kilos of carbon per kilo of protein.
Using radiocarbon dating and isotopic analyses of carbon and nitrogen traces in the bones of cats dogs deer
Carbon isotopes indicate that rodents domestic dogs and pigs from the ancient village were eating millet
Carbon and nitrogen isotopes show that cats were preying on animals that lived on farmed millet probably rodents.
#Indigenous hunting with fire helps sustain Brazils savannasindigenous use of fire for hunting is an unlikely contributor to long-term carbon emissions
and timber fix the carbon and thus collaborate in the regulation of global climate systems;
or accumulating carbon more. As they are trees with a longer turnover because they grow more slowly than pine plantations their management produces fewer disturbances in the system explained Ametzaga.
For this purpose they initially marked the pesticide to be examined with the nonradioactive heavy carbon isotope 13c
and the carbon contained therein was transported into the microbial biomass. For these kinds of residues we can give the all-clear signal
But where should policymakers focus their carbon mitigation efforts? Which technologies hold the most promise?
That would allow us to compensate for short term delays in mitigation by later taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
CCS is a yet-unproven technology that would remove carbon from fossil fuel or bioenergy combustion and store it underground.
In combination with bioenergy this results in carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere (owing to the previous carbon uptake of plants through photosynthesis)
Scientists have long been aware of a terahertz peak in nanotubes the tiny cylinders of rolled-up carbon that show so much promise for advanced materials.
Metallic carbon nanotubes are expected to show plasmon resonance in the terahertz and infrared range but no group has demonstrated clearly the existence of plasmons in carbon nanotubes Zhang said.
Previously people proposed one possible explanation--that the terahertz peak is due to interband absorption in the small band gaps in semiconducting nanotubes.
The researchers previously used this fact to demonstrate that aligned carbon nanotubes act as an excellent terahertz polarizer with performance better than commercial polarizers based on metallic grids.
We will be making various terahertz devices architectures and systems based on carbon nanotube plasmons. Rice alumni Erik Há
#Researchers find forests with bigger potential for carbon creditusing satellite images researchers at the Center of Geography
and Geomatics (Centrogeo) estimate the quantity of carbon that Mexican forests store and identify the species that best serve as a reservoir.
The one-atom thick carbon-based material elicits rhapsodic descriptions as the strongest thinnest material known.
and produce timber rather than conserve forests and store carbon. Previous studies have put a price on many ecosystem services
The findings contrast with the dominant paradigm that including forest climate mitigation services such as carbon storage on compliance markets will lead to the conservation of forests.
and carbon by using a sophisticated model of the climate and economy called an integrated-assessment model.
and carbon are considered. For instance in spruce and fir stands very short rotation periods of 25 years become economically optimal
and other ecosystem services so they recommend forest managers take those factors into account as they try to maximize the flow of timber carbon storage and albedo in mid-and high-latitude temperate and boreal forests.
Several growers in the U s. pelletize Miscanthus for use as a renewable carbon-neutral energy source.
Although carbon stocks may be the same with or without understory vegetation by controlling competing vegetation carbon is reallocated into the trees instead of shrubs;
and carbon loss to wildfire is reduced. These findings provide useful information for managers in their stand treatment projects within National Forest and private forestlands.
To read the full article go to http://treesearch. fs. fed. us/pubs/45108; or http://www. fs. fed. us/psw/programs/efh/staff/jzhang/for other articles.
and grains of sand were tested using a combination of radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence techniques.
Dutch cities are the most ambitious aiming to be'carbon-''climate-'or'energy-neutral'(100 percent reduction target) by 2050 or earlier.
This will allow us for the first time to see how individual canopies are functioning on a landscape level to fix carbon
in addition to timber food and other provisioning services such as carbon sequester and storage reducing flood risk and leisure use.
Many of the benefits from woodlands and forests for example carbon storage maintenance of biodiversity and recreational use are enjoyed uncosted
Losses or gains in forest cover shape many important aspects of an ecosystem including climate regulation carbon storage biodiversity
the carbon stored or emitted as a result of gains or losses in tree cover in both managed and unmanaged forests;
Some local governments have agreed to reduce carbon emissions the authors said Tuesday. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Florida Institute of food and agricultural sciences.
or indigenous areas the total amount of CO2 emissions from biodiesel made from palm oil produced in that region may exceed the carbon intensity of petroleum diesel
and spatially explicit carbon maps to assess the amount of CO2 emissions that may occur as a result of each scenario.
or no enforcement the land use change resulted in 84 and 60 grams of CO2 emitted per megajoule (gco2e/MJ) respectively--the European commission has rated the carbon intensity of diesel as 83.8 gco2e/MJ.
either of these two scenarios the total carbon intensity of biodiesel will exceed greatly that of diesel.
and was dated carbon to be 10660 years old. The jaw displayed a unique pattern of wear on the molars
#Carbon storage recovers faster than plant biodiversity in regrowing tropical forestsa new study of regrowing tropical forests has concluded that plant biodiversity takes longer to recover than carbon storage following major disturbances such as clearance for farming.
and carbon pools in regrowing forests. Over half of all tropical forests have already been converted for agriculture logged
Regrowing forests could help both to soak up carbon emissions produced by human activities and to reduce species extinctions.
although carbon recovered most quickly even after 80 years regrowing forests tended to have less carbon than old-growth forests.
which hold more carbon to become established. In contrast although the number of tree species recovered relatively rapidly many species characteristic of old-growth forests were rare in regrowing forests.
The research team conducted a synthesis of data collected from more than 600 secondary forest sites from 74 previous studies describing carbon pools
#In the study the researchers point out that these results show that forests that are regrowing following agricultural use may be more valuable for the carbon they store than for their biodiversity for the first 100 years.
Policies such as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) often assume that carbon and biodiversity are interchangeable.
While the re-growth of forests following clearance is valuable in soaking up carbon the biodiversity benefits will take a very long time to emerge.#
and suggest a possible mechanism underlying it one based on interspecies carbon exchange. Their results suggest that trees at drier sites buy insurance for their leaves in the form of beefed-up ant protection
and pay for it with carbon the coin of the realm. All plant-animal mutualisms may employ a similar insurance model according to Pringle a postdoctoral fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and at the School of Natural resources and Environment.
and then we realized that carbon exchange can explain it. To test whether water limitation strengthens the defensive mutualism between Ecuador laurel trees (Cordia alliodora)
through the scale insects the trees indirectly pay a carbon fee in the form of sugar-rich sap that is distilled into honeydew to the ants in exchange for guard duty.
and use it to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbon-based carbohydrates which are used for food by the trees the scale insects and the ants.
because laurels there have smaller carbon reserves and a shorter rainy season means they have less time to replace lost leaves.
Pringle and her colleagues used a mathematical model to test this idea looking at the relative costs and benefits of carbon trading between trees and ants under rainy seasons of varying durations.
Water limitation together with the risk of herbivory increases the strength of a carbon-based mutualism the researchers say.
animal and plant communities change ecosystem functions disappear carbon emissions contribute to climate change. Whatever happens regionally has global consequences.
These plants and many others are stored full of energy in carbon bonds which can be converted into fuel
and carbon atoms in the wood to detect fog and rainfall in previous seasons. This is really the first time that climate reconstruction has ever been said done with redwoods Jim Johnstone who recently completed a postdoctoral position at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and the Ocean.
Researchers also analyzed carbon atoms to measure the total amount of moisture in the air. We actually have two indicators that we can use in combination to determine
In other words a forest stores carbon from the atmosphere that would otherwise contribute to the greenhouse effect--and global warming.
But for all the carbon being stored in these trees aboveground a roughly equal amount of carbon is stored belowground.
Carbon on balancethis efficient decomposition is why home gardeners love earthworms: they break down organic matter releasing nutrients.
since in breaking down that organic matter they redistribute carbon throughout the soil changing the basic layering of forest floors
The worms also release carbon dioxide as they eat adding to the forest's carbon emissions.
and there is a big carbon loss and change in the forest floor says Don Ross holding up three different species on his hand.
Over time it seems these soil aggregates might physically protect the organic carbon inside them forming a barrier to the microorganisms that could
So the question is Gorres asks over the long run do earthworms create a negative balance or positive balance on carbon?
if earthworms are increasing that physical protection of carbon. Land use historyrecent studies in the Northern Forest have shown that land use changes--like agricultural abandonment
or intensive tree harvesting--can dramatically change the amount of carbon stored in that land's soils.
Much of the Northern Forest that was tilled previously farmland is currently gaining stored carbon. But what was the soil carbon like before European settlement?
And how much does the current earthworm invasion threaten these gains? It's hard to say.
The eighteen plots the team is studying intensively have widely varying amounts of belowground carbon
and land use history influences the amount of carbon in the soil. Carbon creditsthis is a matter of more than scientific interest.
When we're trying to set up policies about how to increase sequestration of carbon from the air says Sandy Wilmot a forest scientist with the State of Vermont
and a partner on this project it would be very helpful to know how to manage the soil as well as the aboveground.
For example differing forestry techniques clearly affect aboveground carbon storage and are likely to also influence belowground carbon too.
They may also have an effect on the likelihood of earthworm invasion. Human-generated carbon
--and its capture--is starting to develop into big business. Around the world various types of carbon markets are emerging in the effort to slow
and regulate climate change. Credits in these markets generally depend on being able to show that carbon is being sequestered out of the atmosphere--and held long-term.
But belowground carbon is nearly impossible to include in these markets or other mitigation efforts because it's hard to measure.
Forest soil carbon is understood poorly and so it's often not counted or even removed from some forest carbon protocols says Cecilia Danks a social scientist at UVM.
I've been brought in to this earthworm project to try to figure out: is there a carbon market connection?
You don't get credit in the market right now--for the most part--for forest soil carbon. This research effort aims to move toward a better accounting of carbon in the Northern Forest and perhaps Danks hopes the chance for New england forestland owners to get a return on the carbon stored below their feet even carbon passing through the bowel
of an invasive earthworm. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Vermont.
The original article was written by Joshua E. Brown. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#New drug to help common bowel diseasean international team led by University of Adelaide researchers has identified the mechanism of pain relief of a new drug for treating Irritable bowel syndrome with Constipation (IBS-C) based on nonclinical studies
rivals that of professional forestersas global forest and climate experts gather at the Oslo REDD Exchange 2013 to ramp up international efforts to protect carbon-storing forests in the developing world a recent study
and sticks--can produce forest carbon data on par with results by professional foresters using high-tech devices.
and Forest Degradation) projects which pivot on the accurate measurement of carbon trapped in forests do not engage communities in this data gathering
and was based on a study conducted in Southeast asia's most complex carbon-rich forests: lowland forest in Indonesia mountain rain forest in China and monsoon forest in Laos and Vietnam.
and Forest Degradation and Enhancing Carbon Stocks (I-REDD+).+To determine if communities can provide accurate monitoring of aboveground forest-carbon stocks researchers trained community members in simple measuring tactics
and sent them to 289 preselected forest plots to measure the number of trees tree girth and biomass per hectare.
but during a severe drought in 2005 it released 1 petagram of carbon (about one-tenth of annual human emissions) to the atmosphere.
Identifying the mechanismnext the scientists used radio-labeled carbon (C-14) to decipher the biochemical mechanism by which PDAT increases oil production.
In essence this means that the largest pool of tropical carbon On earth has been a black box for ecologists
While the study suggests that hyperdominants--just 1. 4 percent of all Amazonian tree species--account for roughly half of all carbon
Researchers based at Princeton university found that land ecosystems have kept the planet cooler by absorbing billions of tons of carbon especially during the past 60 years.
The planet's land-based carbon sink--or carbon-storage capacity--has kept 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere
From the 1860s to the 1950s land use by humans was a substantial source of the carbon entering the atmosphere because of deforestation and logging.
Had Earth's terrestrial ecosystems remained a carbon source they would have generated instead 65 billion to 82 billion tons of carbon
in addition to the carbon that it would not have absorbed the researchers found. That means a total of 251 billion to 274 billion additional tons of carbon would currently be in the atmosphere.
That much carbon would have pushed the atmosphere's current carbon dioxide concentration to 485 parts-per-million (ppm) the researchers report--well past the scientifically accepted threshold of 450 (ppm) at
which Earth's climate could drastically and irreversibly change. The current concentration is 400 ppm.
Those carbon savings amount to a current average global temperature that is cooler by one-third of a Degree celsius (or a half-Degree fahrenheit) which would have been a sizeable jump the researchers report.
The planet has warmed by only 0. 74 degrees Celsius (1. 3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the early 1900s and the point at
The study is the most comprehensive look at the historical role of terrestrial ecosystems in controlling atmospheric carbon explained first author Elena Shevliakova a senior climate modeler in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Previous research has focused on how plants might offset carbon in the future but overlooked the importance of increased vegetation uptake in the past she said.
People always say we know carbon sinks are important for the climate Shevliakova said. We actually for the first time have a number
and we can say what that sink means for us now in terms of carbon savings. Changes in carbon dioxide emissions from land-use activities need to be considered carefully.
and not consider how managed lands such as recovering forests take up carbon she said. It's not just climate--it's people.
On land people are major drivers of changes in land carbon. They're not just taking carbon out of the land they're actually changing the land's capacity to take up carbon.
Scott Saleska an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who studies interactions between vegetation
I think this does have implications for policies that try to value the carbon saved
whereas most current approaches just account for the'carbon impact.''Work like this could help forest-preservation programs more accurately consider the climate impacts of policy measures related to forest preservation.
Although the researchers saw a strong historical influence of carbon fertilization in carbon absorption that exchange does have its limits Saleska said.
If carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue rising more vegetation would be needed to maintain the size of the carbon sink Shevliakova and her colleagues reported.
and Atmospheric administration's Geophysical Fluid and Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) to simulate how carbon and climate interacted with vegetation soil and marine ecosystems between 1861 and 2005.
The GFDL model predicted changes in climate and in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide based on fossil fuel emissions of carbon.
A decrease in global deforestation combined with enhanced vegetation growth caused by the rapid increase in carbon dioxide changed the land from a carbon source into a carbon sink.
For scientists the model is a significant contribution to understanding the terrestrial carbon sink Saleska said.
Scientists only uncovered the land-based carbon sink about two decades ago while models that can combine the effects of climate change
#Carbon cycle models underestimate indirect role of animalsanimal populations can have a far more significant impact on carbon storage
and exchange in regional ecosystems than is recognized typically by global carbon models according to a new paper authored by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&es).
In fact in some regions the magnitude of carbon uptake or release due to the effects of specific animal species or groups of animals--such as the pine beetles devouring forests in western North america--can rival the impact of fossil fuel
or transport of carbon within an ecosystem says Oswald Schmitz the Oastler Professor of Population
and therefore contribute little carbon in the way of respiration. What these sorts of analyses have not paid attention to is
In one case an unprecedented loss of trees triggered by the pine beetle outbreak in western North america has decreased the net carbon balance on a scale comparable to British columbia's current fossil fuel emissions.
which eventually led to about 80 percent of the ecosystem to burn annually releasing carbon from the plants
when thinking of local and regional carbon budgets said Peter Raymond a professor of ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
For example in the Arctic where about 500 gigatons of carbon is stored in permafrost large grazing mammals like caribou
We're not saying that managing animals will offset these carbon emissions. What we're trying to say is the numbers are of a scale where it is worthwhile to start thinking about how animals could be managed to accomplish that.
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