A new UK study says that cities and towns provide a large and underestimated amount of carbon storage, and can soak up even greater amounts of CO2 if city groups and gardeners plant more trees. Using satellite data and information collected during visits to locally owned or managed properties — including playing fields, golf courses, and abandoned lands — researchers from the University of Kent calculated that the city of Leicester, located in central England, stores about 231,000 tons of carbon, about 10 times more than previous estimates. “Currently, once land in the UK is considered to be urban, its biological carbon density is assumed to be zero,” said Zoe Davies, a Kent researcher and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. “Our study illustrates this is not the case.” The planting of more trees is critical in expanding the size of carbon storage, Davies said. In Leicester, for example, most of the publicly controlled land is grassland. But if trees were planted on 10 percent of that land, the city’s carbon storage would increase by 12 percent. Currently, about 4 percent of the planet’s land surface is considered urbanized.
Cities Absorb More CO2 Than Previously Estimated, Study Says
More From E360
-
Biodiversity
Shrinking Cod: How Humans Are Impacting the Evolution of Species
-
Cities
‘Sponge City’: How Copenhagen Is Adapting to a Wetter Future
-
INTERVIEW
On Controlling Fire, New Lessons from a Deep Indigenous Past
-
Solutions
Paying the People: Liberia’s Novel Plan to Save Its Forests
-
OPINION
Forest Service Plan Threatens the Heart of an Alaskan Wilderness
-
INTERVIEW
Pakistan’s Solar Revolution Is Bringing Power to the People
-
Food & Agriculture
In Uganda, Deadly Landslides Force an Agricultural Reckoning
-
Energy
Why U.S. Geothermal May Advance, Despite Political Headwinds
-
Food & Agriculture
In War Zones, a Race to Save Key Seeds Needed to Feed the World
-
Climate
Lightning Strikes the Arctic: What Will It Mean for the Far North?
-
RIVERS
A Win for Farmers and Tribes Brings New Hope to the Klamath
-
Solutions
Deconstructing Buildings: The Quest for New Life for Old Wood