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Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 201 posts

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#51
post #27

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.

> Bamboo’s carbon sequestration properties have been studied in countries where it naturally forms wild forests, such as Mexico (Castañeda, 2006) and China (Song, 2011). Contributing to these efforts, Ricardo Rojas Quiroga—an environmental engineering student at the Universidad Nuestra Señora de La Paz—studied Guadua angustifolia, a species of bamboo that grows in the Carrasco National Park of Bolivia. He measured the density and masses of bamboo plants in the forest, estimating the amount of carbon stored per hectare. Rojas concluded that, in addition to forming part of one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, each hectare of the bamboo forest of Carrasco National Park stores levels of carbon comparable to some large tree species such as Chinese fir and oak. This finding is consistent with that of many previous studies, a review of which can be found in this 2010 report by INBAR.

https://matteroftrust.org/what-can-bamboo-do-about-co2/

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#52
post #2

I 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.

Yup. Looks like they're often classified "invasive" --

http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/paulownia-princess-tree-on...

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#53

Any 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?

I would also like information about this. How much does this tree deplete the soils, or do they help build them up?

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#54
post #50

> 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...

I also did a similar back-of-the-envelop calculation the moment I saw this 103 tons per acre figures.

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
post #50

> 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...

[deleted]

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#56

Don’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)

Well, we do have to factor in the potential irreversible loss of biodiversity from the current climate change as well.

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

#57
post #39

One 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…

The Janka Hardness is 260-290 which is softer than most soft woods. Seems like that could limit its usage.

Re: Empress trees absorb about 103 tons of carbon a year per acre

#59
post #11
post #2

I 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?

This page has a good overview:

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

#60
post #31
post #14

Earlier 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?

If you bury it you might be able to stop oxygen from getting in and turning into CO2, at least with any speed. But if water gets in you can still have methanogen bacteria come in and turn the wood into methane. Which you might be able to capture and sell and displace methane mined out of the ground but that isn't the same as locking it away forever.

This process is why you have methane production in swamps and conventional landfills.

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