Carbon Storage by Trees on Campus

Trees in the built environment provide many ecosystem services and community benefits, including reducing air pollution and storing carbon. UMass has thousands of trees on campus, and trees sequester and store carbon through photosynthesis and growth. The UMass Arboretum Committee is interested in quantifying the amount of carbon sequestered and stored by campus trees. 

The most common tool used to quantify carbon sequestration and storage is i-TREE, and we will use it for this project. It involves creating sample plots on campus and, within each plot, identifying the species and measuring their trunk diameter. The measurements will be input into i-TREE for analysis.

If there is interest, we may also analyze the campus tree inventory by applying allometric equations to estimate carbon sequestration and storage directly from tree size and species.