![]() The buried wood enters a quasi-geological reservoir that is expected to stay intact semi-permanently. We describe a method of constructing a wood storage facility, named Wood Vault, that can bury woody biomass on a mega-tonne scale in specially engineered enclosures to ensure anaerobic environments, thus preventing wood decay. This study aims to develop a concrete way to carry out WHS at large-scale. To date, the technology has only been purposefully tested in small-scale demonstration projects. This equals 5.5% of current emissions by the agricultural sector.Wood harvesting and storage (WHS) is a hybrid Nature-Engineering combination method to combat climate change by harvesting wood sustainably and storing it semi-permanently for carbon sequestration. The maximum attainable carbon sequestration in Dutch agriculture might be approximately 1 megaton of CO 2 per year. This potential is not being fully utilised due to the costs involved and agricultural limitations. Conservation tillage and an improved alternation of crops have the greatest potential for carbon sequestration. In agriculture, too, there are ways of improving carbon sequestration. This will necessitate making a choice between different ecosystem services, such as green recreation and life-cycle maintenance. This will be a less preferred option in areas where the returns from agriculture are relatively high.Īlthough capturing CO 2 in forests makes a modest contribution, it is possible to strengthen this ecosystem service by looking for the optimum configuration of wooded areas. The water level can then be raised, ensuring that CO 2 remains captured. If the costs of actively lowering the water level are high and the returns from agriculture are relatively low, one option might be to turn the agricultural area into nature. A higher water level impedes the use of heavy equipment in agriculture, so the agricultural land yields less. In real lifeĬO 2 emissions from peat lands are reducible by raising the groundwater level in the area. But this has the disadvantage of releasing more methane, a strong greenhouse gas. Prevention of peat oxidisation by wetting slows down this process and reduces the amount of released CO 2. Peat land contributes significantly to Dutch CO 2 emissions as a result of oxidisation of the peat. ![]() Using forests solely to capture CO 2 (as production forests) might be at the expense of other ecosystem services, such as green recreation and life-cycle maintenance. ![]() In most types of nature (except forests), the carbon stock below ground in the soil is many times greater than the stock above ground in trees and plants.ĭutch forests make a modest contribution to the capture of CO 2, when compared to emissions (1.3%). Damp forests hold the biggest stock of carbon per hectare, but the largest stock of carbon in the soil can be found below natural rough grazing land and reed marshes. This occurs not only in forests, but also in other types of nature. SustainabilityĬO 2 is sequestrated as carbon in nature areas. This mounts up to 4.2 megatons of CO 2 per year in the Netherlands, more than the quantity sequestrated by forests. This causes the oxidisation of the peat (as a reaction to oxygen), which releases a lot of CO 2. Some of the peat land has been cleared and reclaimed since the Middle Ages, and even now groundwater levels are actively being lowered for agricultural purposes. We can look upon this as an ecosystem service delivered in the past. This equals only 1.3% of the total emission by sources such as traffic, households and industry.Ī large quantity of carbon was captured in peat land in ancient times. ![]() Each year Dutch forests sequestrate 2.7 megatons of CO 2. It is estimated that the total stock of carbon in the soil in the Netherlands comes to 357 megatons.įorests figure prominently in capturing CO 2, because they put it into the wood as carbon and this creates a multi-year stock. They also regulate the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere and thus help ensure a more stable climate. Ecosystems can play an important role in capturing greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, CO 2) as carbon in soil and vegetation. ![]()
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