I thought Bamboo was the fastest growing tree? I remember it grows more than an inch every hour. Since no one has done mass planting of Bamboo, there must be some down fall that wasn't well known? Edit: Turns out Bamboo is classified as plant. But the question remains the same.
Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
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Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#52I planted one of these trees a few years ago and I think it's absolutely gorgeous. I can't get over how absolutely huge the leaves get. A lot of people hate them though, for the same reason outlined in the article: you can't kill them. Many consider them weeds.
http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#53Any idea whether this is damaging/depleting for the soil because it is so fast-growing? If so, to what extent can the soil be artificially rejuvenated through fertilizers or other tools?
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#54> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...
Global CO2 emissions: ~40GT/year
Area required: ~600K square miles
This is approximately the size of the entire state of Alaska. Every year.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#55> Empress trees (...) absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were 20.15 metric tons CO2-equivalent per person[1]. So basically each american would have to cultivate about 0.196 acre of empress trees (792 sq meters, or 8522 sq foot) to become carbon neutral. [1] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-environmental-footprint-f...
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#56Don’t we need to take into account the local ecology? If we deploy one single plant to “solve” our carbon capture needs aren’t we both going to reduce biodiversity (they out compete local species) and set up a single point of failure? (Like banana trees now)
Folks should still be preserving the seeds and protect the local ecology as much as possible but they don't mean anything if the climate change isn't slowed down or reversed resulting into the same loss anyway.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#57One of the firms referenced in the Bloomberg article actually offers the plants (and opportunities of investment in them) and has a number of answers to the questions asked in the thread: https://worldtree.info/empress-tree/ Though I have personally never heard about anything actually manufactured with the actual "empress" or "princess" timber. It seems like in Japan it has a number of tradititonal uses, the family i…
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#58Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#59I planted one of these trees a few years ago and I think it's absolutely gorgeous. I can't get over how absolutely huge the leaves get. A lot of people hate them though, for the same reason outlined in the article: you can't kill them. Many consider them weeds.
>A lot of people hate them though, for the same reason outlined in the article: you can't kill them. Many consider them weeds. I reread the article and I see no mention of it?
http://www.tsusinvasives.org/home/database/paulownia-tomento...
>...its ability to sprout prolifically from adventitious buds on stems and roots allows it to survive fire, cutting and even bulldozing in construction areas; making it difficult to remove from established areas.
>...
> Cutting or girdling trees with power or manual saws are effective at preventing seed production, but an herbicide treatment is necessary following cutting since Paulownia readily re-sprouts. Hand pulling may be effective for young seedlings. Plants should be pulled as soon as they are large enough to grasp. Seedlings are best pulled after a rain when the soil is loose. The entire root must be removed since broken fragments may re-sprout. Cutting or pulling is the preferred mechanical treatments of the Paulownia tormentosa; do not use fire because this species is able to survive fire and then quickly proliferates and out-competes native tree species post-fire.
Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> After the tree dies, it would only go back into the atmosphere if the trunk was burned. To nitpick: or if it decomposes in other ways.
And what if we bury it? Can we do landfills with the trunks of these trees, like filling up old brown coal mines? This was something that I was thinking about while driving past a few former mines in Germany. Great places to fill up with decomposables. At a certain point the top layer will stop the bottom layers CO2 from leaking, I expect?
This process is why you have methane production in swamps and conventional landfills.