Day One – Kenton Rogers from Treeconomics shows us how it is done.
It’s been nearly three summers since we first ventured out, our pockets bulging with books about trees, the scent of sap and science in our nostrils, and tape measures, maps, rainproof clipboards, and funny bits of plastic with a wobbly circle-thing on them all festooned about our persons – to begin the University of Leeds Campus i-Tree Eco Full Survey.
Learning i-Tree with Kenton and Keith Sacre from Treeconomics (right). (UBoC PhD student Jamie Wilson is on the left, and the three in the middle are Tom Bliss, Anna Gugan and Dr Hannah Walker.
This was the first leg of a long journey which also includes an i-Tree Eco Sample Survey of Leeds’ Middleton Ward (where our Forest Observatory keeps a weather eye on the ancient woodland in Middleton Park), and an i-Tree Canopy survey of the whole city, ward by ward. (Reports on both these, along with other valuation work using CAVAT etc, are in preparation). And there’s more to come, as we work towards better ways to value Natural Capital, and so help to protect existing trees and facilitate the growth of more – while the world gradually remembers how vital the Greenery Machinery is to our heath, welfare – and even survival.
The Committee for Climate Change (of which our Trustee Piers Forster in a member) has advised that we need to halve emissions by 2030 if we’re to stand a fair chance of avoiding more than 1.5 degrees C of warming over pre-industrial levels, and possibly catastrophic climate impacts.
As Tom had explained in his talk, the United Bank of Carbon (UBoC) promotes the twinning of woodlands in the UK (temperate forest) and Africa, (tropical forest) because each biome offers unique and complementary benefits, both for the climate and for local communities. Tropical trees work harder to fix CO2 than UK trees, while offering many social and other benefits for local people and wildlife, and UK trees offer key engagement features for UK donors, while also delivering valuable carbon and other benefits. So a donation allowing the creation of a new twinning was a perfect outcome for UBoC. Continue reading New Forest Twins: York, UK = Masaka, Uganda→
Trees for Water, one of UBoC’s vetted projects in India, is currently seeing funding to support an extension of their scheme.
Photo from CIRHEP
With the monsoon season behind them, farmers are now preparing the ground by levelling and ploughing, and are ready for a modest amount of cash to pay for trees. Continue reading Trees for Water need your help!→
Hanna with a leaf from a species that we dubbed ‘Acer utterlihumungus’
Dr Hannah Walker, UBoC’s former i-Tree researcher, is heading down to Antarctica for five months with the British Antarctic Survey.
Not many trees there, you’re thinking. But this is a return to Hannah’s background in atmospheric science and a big change from her role in the i-Tree survey of the University of Leeds campus.
One fascinating tree on the university campus does, however, provide a link (not this one though).
An extensive new study co-authored by UBoC’s Jamie Carr will help scientists update conservation strategies, and understand how climate change is affecting species around the world, as we struggle to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
Cat-Eyed Mangrove Snake – Boiga dendrophila. Photo by David Bickford. This Southeast Asian snake hunts in mangrove ecosystems, but rising sea levels as a result of climate change will result in habitat loss, threatening the species.
While much of the news is stark – we have only a very few years in which to act if we are to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and so reduce catastrophic climate change to something we hope will be at least manageable – it’s encouraging to see that the IPCC has identified reforestation as one of four key areas of action.
This map from Carbon Brief shows where afforestation is taking place around the world.
UBoC PhD student Toby Green visited the Amuria District in Uganda in early 2018 to see how our Terrific Tropical Trees were getting on. Here is his report (more here)
With special thanks to ITF for managing the project and assisting Toby with his trip.
In July 2017 Safestyle UK kindly donated £1,000 via UBoC, towards the planting of 182 trees as part of the Trees For Cities ‘Trees for Bradford’ project in Low Moor, south Bradford – which was delivered in partnership with Bradford Environmental Action Trust (BEAT).
United Bank of Carbon is a not-for-profit collaboration between businesses and environmental scientists, which protects and restores forests and other greenery, through environmentally and socially-responsible partnerships with local communities. We undertake research, support forest and woodland projects in the UK and the tropics that deliver CSR/PR benefits, provide carbon reduction advice, and help to arrange compensation for unavoidable carbon emissions
