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Carbon Stored in Coarse Woody Debris
by Susanna Blankley
Spring 2004 

As you drive along the curvaceous highway that brings you from New York City to Black Rock Forest, the beautiful scenery entices your gaze away from where it should remain: on the road.  Before you even enter the Forest , you are deeply aware that something awaits you that is worthy of exploration and preservation.  You are eager to immerse yourself in its vibrant canopy, but cautious not to disturb it.

Last summer, fellow Barnard student Emma Hoyt and I tried to achieve a balance while working to obtain knowledge about carbon sequestration that we hope will aid in the preservation of all forests.  Emma was doing research for her senior thesis and I was working on a research project; both focused on the amounts of carbon contained in coarse woody debris (CWD), which is basically large logs and dead trees.  Black Rock Forest is an ideal place to conduct this research because, for nearly seventy-five years, the trees on certain long-term plots have been measured, and their above-ground biomasses (AGB) and carbon content have been calculated.  There is a significant amount of carbon in the Forest ’s soil and woody debris as well, yet the amount of carbon in CWD had not been widely studied.  The purpose of this project was to estimate the amount of carbon in the CWD of the long-term plots and to create a set of methods that could be further developed for future use.

It is important to know as much as possible about forest carbon sequestration in order to determine a forest’s efficacy as a carbon sink.  The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at a rapid rate, and methods to reduce it must be found.  There are doubts that the shrinking number of forests can absorb the growing amount of carbon dioxide.  It is argued that they are only a temporary solution, and that those that are approaching maturity will not function as sinks in the future.  Our research showed, however, that this might not be the case.  Although the amount of carbon that  forests can sequester each year tends to decrease with age, they still absorb a large amount of carbon that is excluded from the atmosphere.  Currently in Black Rock Forest , biologists estimate that 33 percent of the carbon in the Forest ecosystem is in the AGB of trees.  Our research showed that the CWD contains an average of 5 percent of the Forest ’s carbon.

It is possible that even mature forests can continue to sequester carbon, but that this will take place less in the trees and more in the CWD and the soil.  We only applied our methods to a few of the long-term plots; this summer, other investigators will apply them more widely across the  Forest.  This, along with studies on other aspects of the Black Rock Forest ecosystem, will provide us with a better knowledge of how to maintain and increase a forest’s carbon stores, preserving our lives and the forests that sustain them.

Susanna Blankley is a Barnard College senior who worked at the Forest in the summer of 2003 on a Hughes fellowship, guided by Professor Peter Bower and Dr. William Schuster.  Emma Hoyt worked at the Forest on a CERC internship.