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Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets

BACKGROUND: With a lack of United States federal policy to address climate change, cities, the private sector, and universities have shouldered much of the work to reduce carbon dioxide (CO(2)) and other greenhouse gas emissions. This study aims to determine how landcover characteristics influence t...

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Autores principales: Hundertmark, Wiley J., Lee, Marissa, Smith, Ian A., Bang, Ashley H. Y., Chen, Vivien, Gately, Conor K., Templer, Pamela H., Hutyra, Lucy R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33415575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13021-020-00160-5
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author Hundertmark, Wiley J.
Lee, Marissa
Smith, Ian A.
Bang, Ashley H. Y.
Chen, Vivien
Gately, Conor K.
Templer, Pamela H.
Hutyra, Lucy R.
author_facet Hundertmark, Wiley J.
Lee, Marissa
Smith, Ian A.
Bang, Ashley H. Y.
Chen, Vivien
Gately, Conor K.
Templer, Pamela H.
Hutyra, Lucy R.
author_sort Hundertmark, Wiley J.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: With a lack of United States federal policy to address climate change, cities, the private sector, and universities have shouldered much of the work to reduce carbon dioxide (CO(2)) and other greenhouse gas emissions. This study aims to determine how landcover characteristics influence the amount of carbon (C) sequestered and respired via biological processes, evaluating the role of land management on the overall C budget of an urban university. Boston University published a comprehensive Climate Action Plan in 2017 with the goal of achieving C neutrality by 2040. In this study, we digitized and discretized each of Boston University’s three urban campuses into landcover types, with C sequestration and respiration rates measured and scaled to provide a University-wide estimate of biogenic C fluxes within the broader context of total University emissions. RESULTS: Each of Boston University’s three highly urban campuses were net sources of biogenic C to the atmosphere. While trees were estimated to sequester 0.6 ± 0.2 kg C m(−2) canopy cover year(−1), mulch and lawn areas in 2018 emitted C at rates of 1.7 ± 0.4 kg C m(−2) year(−1) and 1.4 ± 0.4 kg C m(−2) year(−1), respectively. C uptake by tree canopy cover, which can spatially overlap lawn and mulched landcovers, was not large enough to offset biogenic emissions. The proportion of biogenic emissions to Scope 1 anthropogenic emissions on each campus varied from 0.5% to 2%, and depended primarily on the total anthropogenic emissions on each campus. CONCLUSIONS: Our study quantifies the role of urban landcover in local C budgets, offering insights on how landscaping management strategies—such as decreasing mulch application rates and expanding tree canopy extent—can assist universities in minimizing biogenic C emissions and even potentially creating a small biogenic C sink. Although biogenic C fluxes represent a small fraction of overall anthropogenic emissions on urban university campuses, these biogenic fluxes are under active management by the university and should be included in climate action plans.
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spelling pubmed-77922152021-01-11 Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets Hundertmark, Wiley J. Lee, Marissa Smith, Ian A. Bang, Ashley H. Y. Chen, Vivien Gately, Conor K. Templer, Pamela H. Hutyra, Lucy R. Carbon Balance Manag Research BACKGROUND: With a lack of United States federal policy to address climate change, cities, the private sector, and universities have shouldered much of the work to reduce carbon dioxide (CO(2)) and other greenhouse gas emissions. This study aims to determine how landcover characteristics influence the amount of carbon (C) sequestered and respired via biological processes, evaluating the role of land management on the overall C budget of an urban university. Boston University published a comprehensive Climate Action Plan in 2017 with the goal of achieving C neutrality by 2040. In this study, we digitized and discretized each of Boston University’s three urban campuses into landcover types, with C sequestration and respiration rates measured and scaled to provide a University-wide estimate of biogenic C fluxes within the broader context of total University emissions. RESULTS: Each of Boston University’s three highly urban campuses were net sources of biogenic C to the atmosphere. While trees were estimated to sequester 0.6 ± 0.2 kg C m(−2) canopy cover year(−1), mulch and lawn areas in 2018 emitted C at rates of 1.7 ± 0.4 kg C m(−2) year(−1) and 1.4 ± 0.4 kg C m(−2) year(−1), respectively. C uptake by tree canopy cover, which can spatially overlap lawn and mulched landcovers, was not large enough to offset biogenic emissions. The proportion of biogenic emissions to Scope 1 anthropogenic emissions on each campus varied from 0.5% to 2%, and depended primarily on the total anthropogenic emissions on each campus. CONCLUSIONS: Our study quantifies the role of urban landcover in local C budgets, offering insights on how landscaping management strategies—such as decreasing mulch application rates and expanding tree canopy extent—can assist universities in minimizing biogenic C emissions and even potentially creating a small biogenic C sink. Although biogenic C fluxes represent a small fraction of overall anthropogenic emissions on urban university campuses, these biogenic fluxes are under active management by the university and should be included in climate action plans. Springer International Publishing 2021-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7792215/ /pubmed/33415575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13021-020-00160-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Hundertmark, Wiley J.
Lee, Marissa
Smith, Ian A.
Bang, Ashley H. Y.
Chen, Vivien
Gately, Conor K.
Templer, Pamela H.
Hutyra, Lucy R.
Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title_full Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title_fullStr Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title_full_unstemmed Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title_short Influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
title_sort influence of landscape management practices on urban greenhouse gas budgets
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33415575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13021-020-00160-5
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