Carbon offsets from reforestation, measuring carbon capture and sequestration

Approaches to measuring carbon capture & sequestration:

There are two methods:

One can work backwards; starting with the fuels and energy consumed and estimate how many trees it would take to offset the emissions from these fuels. Such a tool is the CLIMATE CHANGE CALCULATOR found at http://www.americanforests.org/resources/ccc/index.php

For example, if I enter 300 gal. of fuel oil; it gives me 6,600 lbs of CO2 emissions and an offset of 9.9 trees.

The other is to precisely measure the forests, wetlands, and fields;  and calculate month by month the amount of gases and other pollutants captured, and carbon sequestered. “

The  i-Tree software suite v. 2.1 was jointly developed over ten years by the U.S. Forest Service, the DAVEY foundation, the ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION, the Society of Municipal Arborists, and the International Society of Arboriculture.  It provides  a high degree of precision in measuring vegetation of all kinds, by zone, by month  and then converting that into pollutant removal and eventually carbon storage, providing both easy to read graphs and quantified summaries.

To quote the preface to the 300 pp + user manual: “i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban and community forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools   … It can be used by state forestry agencies, municipal foresters, non-profit tree advocates, commercial arborists, environmental consultants, planners, or any others interested in community forests and the environmental benefits they produce”

The suite consists of:

• UFORE, (Urban Forest Effects Model) which  is designed to use standardized field data from randomly located plots throughout a community, along with local hourly air pollution and meteorological data, to quantify urban forest structure, environmental effects, and value to communities.;
• STRATUM (Street tree resource analysis tool for urban forest managers) utilizes a sample or complete tree inventory to describe tree management needs, and quantify the value of annual environmental and aesthetic benefits such as energy conservation, air quality improvement, CO2 reduction, stormwater control, and property value increases.
• Utilities include MCTI( Mobile Community Tree Inventory for PDA’s; SDAP(Storm Damage Assessment Protocol) and the Species Selector to determine the most appropriate tree species for our area, as well as a sample.

Needless to say, none of the Maine foresters or land use planners I’ve consulted had any familiarity with it; and its complexity requires a forester or experienced land use planner to understand and operate it.

EPA’s estimates of carbon sequestration for the U.S.

The EPA estimates annual U.S. carbon sequestration from land-use change and forestry in 2004 at 780.1 MMTCO₂e,⁶ representing an offset of 11 percent of total 2004 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (7,104.6 MMTCO₂e). In 1990, carbon sequestration attributable to land use and forestry was 910.4 MMTCO₂e, or 15 percent of total 1990 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (6,112.8 MMTCO₂e).⁷ The 2004 estimates for carbon sequestration from land-use change and forestry include:

·      637.2 MMTCO₂e (million metric tons of CO2)  from forested land,

·      88.0 MMTCO₂e from urban trees,

·      9.3 MMTCO₂e from landfilled yard trimmings and food scraps, and

·       45.6 MMTCO₂e from all other sources, including net emissions of 7.3 MMTCO₂e from grassland soil stocks.[1]

Calculating the value (revenue potential) of the carbon removed from the air and stored in Town forest, grass, and wet lands.

The 2007 “State of the Carbon Cycle Report for N. America [2]suggested that ‘growing forests’ may remove up to half of the 2 billion tons of caron released into the atmosphere. N. New England forests are growing bigger as a result of climate change..

The amount of carbon stored in Brunswick’s forests is significant and pending a more precise analysis of forest cover can range from 25.1 tC/ha to 53.5 tC/ha. Using the upper range value, this means 346,418 tons of Carbon are stored in Brunswick’s forests.(16,000/2.471 x 53.5).²  Using the IPCC values of  $100 US$/tCO2, one can see how valuable our Forests and wetlands really are.