Carbon Accounting Must Include City Greenery, Researchers Say
Phoenix666 writes:
The Los Angeles basin is often thought of as a dry, smoggy, overdeveloped landscape. But a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the manicured lawns, emerald golf courses and trees of America's second-largest city have a surprisingly large influence on the city's carbon dioxide emissions. The carbon dioxide fluctuations driven by L.A.'s greenery are about one-third the level created by the burning of fossil fuels.
[...] Lead study author John Miller, a carbon cycle scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Monitoring Laboratory, said that when researchers disentangled the carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels from the naturally occurring carbon dioxide, they found that L.A.'s vegetated landscape contributed substantially to the levels of carbon dioxide around the city.
"This is arguably the most significant finding to date from the project: That policy makers interested in reducing the carbon footprints of cities need to pay attention to CO2 emissions and removals from urban green spaces, not just fossil fuel emissions," said study co-author Duren
The vegetation emits large amounts of carbon dioxide when it goes dormant during the dry season.
Journal Reference:
John B. Miller, Scott J. Lehman, Kristal R. Verhulst, et al. Large and seasonally varying biospheric CO2 fluxes in the Los Angeles megacity revealed by atmospheric radiocarbon [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005253117)
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