dc.contributor.author |
Weissert, Lena |
en |
dc.contributor.author |
Salmond, Jennifer |
en |
dc.contributor.author |
Schwendenmann, Luitgard |
en |
dc.coverage.spatial |
Palmerston North |
en |
dc.date.accessioned |
2016-08-16T03:03:28Z |
en |
dc.date.issued |
2013 |
en |
dc.identifier.citation |
The New Zealand Climate Change Conference. 2013 |
en |
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/2292/30013 |
en |
dc.description.abstract |
The urban population in New Zealand is expected to increase significantly over the next years. Urban areas are generally large sources of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, attempts to quantify atmospheric CO2 concentrations and fluxes have suggested that densily vegetated urban areas may absorb sufficient quantities of anthropogenic CO2 to act as a local sink. Consequently, urban greening programs now form an important part of many urban climate change mitigation policies globally as well as in New Zealand. However, knowledge about the direct contribution of urban vegetation on atmospheric CO2 concentrations is still limited and measurements scarce. This paper examines the methods used to date to estimate / measure carbon pools and CO2 fluxes from urban vegetation and soils (collectively known as urban forests) and aggregates currently available results. Results from the northern hemisphere show that carbon pools in urban forests were comparable to 3 – 60% of the annually released fossil fuel emissions, while photosynthetic uptake accounted for 0.3 – 2.6% of the total estimated emissions in urban areas. Whilst vegetation did not offset CO2 emissions on an annual basis in these scenarios, vegetative CO2 uptake resulted in significantly lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations in summer. However, the currently available results are related to a large degree of uncertainty due to the limitations of the applied methods, the limited number of urban areas studied and the temporal / spatial resolution of the fieldwork. This paper demonstrates that in order to effectively quantify and encorporate carbon fluxes from urban areas into annual CO2 budgets, future research needs to use a combination of methodologies and be aware of the scales of their studies. Thus, before investing in urban greening programs the potential of urban vegetation as a climate change mitigation measure needs to be further investigated, particularly for cities in the southern hemisphere. |
en |
dc.relation.ispartof |
The New Zealand Climate Change Conference |
en |
dc.rights |
Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. |
en |
dc.rights.uri |
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm |
en |
dc.title |
The potential of urban forests to mitigate atmospheric CO2 concentrations |
en |
dc.type |
Conference Poster |
en |
pubs.author-url |
https://web.archive.org/web/20150919221516/http://www.nzcccconference.org/images/custom/weissert,_lena_-_the_potential.pdf |
en |
dc.rights.accessrights |
http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess |
en |
pubs.elements-id |
535467 |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Science |
en |
pubs.org-id |
School of Environment |
en |
pubs.record-created-at-source-date |
2016-07-13 |
en |