This urban vegetationabsorbs much more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously believed, both in green areas and in small isolated spots.. A scientific study in New York found that photosynthesis in the city’s plant ecosystems absorbs more than twice the carbon emissions from traffic, and even 40% of total emissions. The surprising result reveals that the importance of urban vegetation in the carbon cycle has been underestimated.
“Even in large, dense cities like New York, biogenic CO2 flows (trees, shrubs, plants, lawns and lawns) during the summer can be greater than anthropogenic emissions.” It is the first sentence of the study published in the journal ‘Environmental Research Letters’.
According to researchers, it happens that scattered, there is a large amount of hitherto unrecognized vegetation. in small spots, even in highly developed areas. Vegetation that contributes significantly to carbon ‘sequestration’. For example, lonely stray trees, small home gardens, overgrown vacant lots, and other small areas of grass or weeds.
“There’s a lot more vegetation than we thought“This tells us that the ecosystem is important in New York City, and if it’s important here, it’s probably important elsewhere, too.” Add.
Scientists discovered that sparse vegetationEvery lawn and every green space, no matter how small, plays an “important role in the exchange of atmospheric gases.” Y can contribute 46% to 76% of ‘cleaning’ urban airdepending on the plant type.
street trees
“Developed (urbanized) groundcovers are ubiquitous in cities, and vegetation in these developed areas is often found in the form of street trees, park trees, and lawns,” the report says.
As a result of all this, although New York has the highest anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the United States and the third in the world.and what has relatively little vegetationbiogenic CO2 uptake offsets up to 40% of all anthropogenic emissions in the metropolitan area on a summer afternoon.
“This highlights the significant contribution of urban plant ecosystems to the urban carbon cycle, even in large megacities,” the authors of the research note write. The findings are important because Urban areas account for more than 70% of human carbon dioxide emissions.
“With a growing number of cities adopting ambitious carbon emission reduction targets, accurate characterization of vegetation and biogenic carbon flows is crucial for the development of effective atmospheric monitoring tools,” the authors add.
The researchers, for example, determined that: the treetops cover about 170 square kilometers of the city, is about 22% of its length. Also this pastures represent another 94 square kilometers; ie 12%.
They analyzed how vegetation interacted with carbon emissions between June and August 2018, when the metropolitan area emitted a total of approximately 14.7 million tons of CO2. The largest sources were the electricity industry and energy for buildings; road transport ‘only’ represented about 1.2 million tonnes.
Promote ‘plant architecture’
The vegetation of urbanized areas, hitherto neglected, is almost 85% of daily carbon absorption, according to research. The scientists found that CO2 levels rise in the morning with traffic and other human activity, and fall in the afternoon when lawns and trees go to ‘work’.
Research results show the importance of the subject. promoting green roofs on buildings and ‘plant architecture‘ anyone ‘bioclimatic‘. The presence of vegetation in urbanized areas assumes absorption of up to six times the amount of greenhouse gases compared to areas without it.
“The absorption of CO2 by vegetation in New York on summer afternoons is large enough to completely offset the emissions produced by many of the individual anthropogenic sectors, such as energy for buildings, the power industry, the combustion of factories, or traffic, but it is not the sum of them all,” the author details. .
Researchers sponsored by Columbia University concluded that: increase in plant surface represents a “core” contribution to offset polluting emissions originates from humans.
“As vegetation offsets the CO2 emissions from traffic in New York City by up to twice, we expect this to be true for less congested cities, particularly cities with an increasing share of electric cars,” they say.
The results of the study agree with the previous ones, in which the example was determined as: 20% more trees in megacities doubles the benefits of urban forests.such as pollution reduction, carbon sequestration and energy reduction.
Reference work: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca68f
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