Estimating Carbon Storage in the City
Speaker Information
Dr Mark Bradford is the Professor of Soils and Ecosystem Ecology at the Yale School of the Environment. Bradford’s work focuses on the health, biology, ecology and carbon storage potential of forest, grassland and agricultural soils. He is interested in developing knowledge that allows us to predict how environmental change and management will affect the rates of carbon stabilization and decomposition processes, and hence how the size of soil organic carbon stores change in space and time. Since starting at Yale in 2009, Dr. Bradford has increasingly focused on practice-relevant issues, including experimental assessment of urban afforestation techniques as part of NYC’s Million Trees Initiative.
Dr. Bradford holds a BSc and PhD in Biological Sciences from Exeter University in the UK.
Forests play an important role in mitigating many of the negative effects of climate change. One of the ways forests mitigate impacts of climate change is by absorbing carbon dioxide and storing the majority of the carbon in their wood and soils. Yet estimates of forest carbon storage in cities vary widely because they are strongly dependent on conceptions of what “urban forest” is. In this talk I explore the consequences of the different definitions and hence measurement of urban forest, using New York City as a case study. The results show that trees in forested areas of New York City account for the majority of carbon stored despite being a minority of the tree canopy. They suggest that urban forested areas should be at the center of urban greening policies looking to mitigate the climate footprint of cities.