In one St. Paul suburb, it's trees vs. global warming

Home
Local

In one St. Paul suburb, it's trees vs. global warming

Updated: June 29, 2012 - 8:00 PM

0
comments
resize text
print
buy reprints

Tweet
share

email
Email share

your name

your email

recipients email

+ add a comment add a comment

Plants, especially trees, play an enormous role in regulating climate change by capturing the carbon released by burning fossil fuels. But not much is known about the role they play in the urban and suburban landscape. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota and University of California, Santa Barbara, have gone to great heights to try to answer that.

They put sensors on a tower above a St. Paul suburban neighborhood. It measured tiny changes in carbon dioxide, temperature, water vapor and wind. They found that for nine months, the suburban landscape added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. During the summer, however, suburban greenery absorbed enough carbon dioxide to balance out fossil fuel emissions.