Blue Carbon acknowledged as a
solution to mitigate climate change -
Paul Horgen, of Comox Valley Project Watershed, states that the residents of Comox Valley (on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada) are now faced with the question of what they can do to offset their dependence on fossil fuels, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
Horgen argues that this can be done through "living carbon" and through Blue Carbon, suggesting that "Project Watershed's Blue Carbon Pilot Project provides a way to remove CO2 from our environment by restoring our estuary". He continues by encouraging people to engage in the restoration of crucial Blue Carbon ecosystems, pointing out that they remove carbon more effectively that trees.
Paul Horgen, of Comox Valley Project Watershed, states that the residents of Comox Valley (on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada) are now faced with the question of what they can do to offset their dependence on fossil fuels, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
Horgen argues that this can be done through "living carbon" and through Blue Carbon, suggesting that "Project Watershed's Blue Carbon Pilot Project provides a way to remove CO2 from our environment by restoring our estuary". He continues by encouraging people to engage in the restoration of crucial Blue Carbon ecosystems, pointing out that they remove carbon more effectively that trees.
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'Blue
forest' could grow in Estuary
1 May
2012 / Postmedia News - A major
activity on Earth Day is planting trees, says Paul Horgen, of Comox Valley
Project Watershed.
"Yet
at the first Earth Day in 1970, our student association planted a plastic tree
to symbolize the lack of government policies to protect the environment,"
he notes. "Forty-two Earth Days have been celebrated and many symbolic
real trees have been planted since then."
He noted a
recent article in the New York Times stated: "Trees are on the front lines
of our changing climate - and when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start
dying, it's time to pay attention. Using the energy of the sun, trees remove
the green house gas CO2 from the atmosphere, which mitigates our warming
globe."
Horgen says
a question facing residents of communities like the Comox Valley is how we can
do more to offset our dependence on fossil fuels, which dump CO2 into our air.
This, he
argues, can be done through 'living carbon' - the long-term storage of carbon
in the tissues of trees and plants in forests. There is also an alternative -
'blue carbon', which is a form of living carbon that occurs in estuarine
environments.
"Project
Watershed's Blue Carbon Pilot Project provides a way to remove CO2 from our
environment by restoring our estuary," he suggests.
"Those
of us that live in coastal communities can really contribute to greenhouse gas
removal from the atmosphere by replanting lost eelgrass and salt marsh
communities that were damaged by dredging and developmental pressures during the
industrial years on our estuary" adds Horgen.
"These
restorations of 'blue forests' remove carbon, more effectively than trees and
also provide habitat for fish and other estuarine organisms."
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Project Watershed's Blue Carbon Pilot Project:
http://projectwatershed.ca/archives/2045
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Project Watershed's Blue Carbon Pilot Project:
http://projectwatershed.ca/archives/2045
