Written by Arianna Fardad and Maria Metler
How many acres of Vashon Forest does it take to offset your household’s carbon emissions each year? Vashon Nature Center asked the Advanced Placement Environmental Science students at Vashon High School this question as part of a carbon study funded by a NOAA Planet Stewards grant.
Carbon Sequestration is the process of capturing atmospheric carbon and storing it in solid carbon-based lifeforms like trees and kelp, or bodies of water like the Salish Sea. Trees and marine algae absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store that carbon in their bodies. For centuries the natural processes of carbon production (such as wildfires and animal farts!) have been balanced by similar sequestration rates.
While carbon sequestration can maintain relative ecosystem balance at regular levels of natural carbon production, human activity has created rampant carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere. Increased carbon dioxide levels create a heat-trapping effect in our atmosphere as if a warm blanket was insulating the Earth. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water which in the Pacific Northwest contributes to changing weather patterns like longer, hotter summers with less rain and increasingly severe winter storm events.
Research shows the mental processing of this information often leads to feelings of anxiety and doom (which you might be experiencing reading this blog post). However, climate action can offset our negative feelings by making us become part of the solution. If we can contribute to rampant carbon production, why not work towards rampant carbon sequestration?
On Vashon Island, we are surrounded by vibrant biodiversity across all our ecosystems from the subtidal kelp forests to the lowland terrestrial forests laced with spring-fed streams and speckled with ponds. Our natural areas can be our learning lab to create a community-wide solutions-based approach to carbon sequestration!
One mature tree can remove and store about 48 lbs. of carbon dioxide each year. Getting involved can be as simple as planting a tree in 2025 (you can take advantage of the Vashon Land Trust’s native tree and shrub sale through Feb 7th) Last month, the Advanced Placement Environmental Science students we have been working with planted over 300 trees and shrubs. A single action can sometimes feel insignificant, but over time these collective efforts can greatly improve our quality of life and the natural world that supports us. As one student stated, “I discovered the feeling of helping the earth and how easy it is to give back to the earth if you truly want to. It is a rewarding feeling knowing that the trees planted will go towards helping mitigate the carbon in the air.”
The compound effect of positive action can push the needle toward significant progress. For example, the 300 trees planted on the island by students were part of a larger effort to plant 10,000 trees to offset carbon emissions as a goal of the inaugural Youth Hip Hop Climate Conference hosted at the University of Washington by Hip Hop Is Green and AVELA. We took the environmental science students to the conference in November where powerful and diverse leaders from across the nation discussed career pathways in the work against climate change. The message was clear: in the face of adversity, we have to collectively work together across boundaries and obstacles to support one another and the planet to equitably achieve significant progress in the work on climate change.
By taking public transportation to the conference instead of a school bus we saved about 3397.29 grams of carbon. During the planting project, students used recomposite soil – soil made from (willingly!) composted deceased humans. During the process, nutrients in the human body support new life in the soil, saving an estimated one metric ton of carbon dioxide per person from entering the atmosphere compared to standard burial or flame cremation. (Source: Wired) This means our mulch pile alone saved 14,000 tons of carbon entering the atmosphere (you can do the math to figure out how many people that is!).
Students will return to the planting site with the help of Vashon Nature Center to monitor planting success and collect additional data. The combination of increasing climate literacy and science knowledge, while inspiring individual action through personal life decisions and engagement in environmental equity makes this work powerful. You can test your climate literacy skills with this brief online survey from CLEAN Network. Or name your climate emotions and measure your climate anxiety against your climate action with this resource from the Pacific Education Institute.
To answer the question students are tackling about how many Vashon forests it would take to offset your household carbon emissions, follow these steps:
- Calculate an estimate of your annual emissions at coolclimate.org
- Use the table below to look up the sequestration rates for each forest type on the previous slide.
- Divide your annual emissions by the annual sequestration per acre of each forest type to explore how many acres of each type of forest you’d need on Vashon to offset your carbon emissions.
Each of us can be positive change-makers in our communities. Tackling issues together can be, as a student said, “a very rewarding experience, and it [feels] good to know we are helping give back to the Earth.” By taking action, we can push the needle toward a more balanced climate while individually pushing the needle of the climate anxiety wheel away from feelings of fear, sadness, and fear towards positivity.