CNC Report 08.26.24 8.5x11 - Flipbook - Page 52
IMPLEMENT REWILDING FOR CARBON SEQUESTRATION
How can thoughtful landscape design enrich storm-water management (i.e. bioswales), beautification,
and buffer pedestrians from car lanes along the pedestrian way?
What plant and tree selections provide shade canopy and the best carbon sequestration over time?
1. Vegetation
Vegetation sequesters and stores carbon during its growth. It can enhance a city’s micro-climate,
which has positive side-effects on residents and buildings.
• Aim to increase and carve out dedicated green spaces planted with native and high
sequestration tree species.
• When possible, introduce networks of green streets and connect the layers of urban parks.
• With repaving cycles, modify impervious surfaces to permeable pavements (i.e. recycled content
+ turfgrass, etc.).
• Utilize landscape as a means of creating the streetscape and sequestering water + retaining
water.
• Utilize opportunities on-site for multi-functionality is critical. Linear roads and grading allow for
effective bioswales that serve multiple environmental benefits. Additionally, they can serve as
streetscape elements such as bike lane division and public nodes.
• Occupy urban brownfields and temporal vacancies with low embodied carbon greening
strategies in the meantime (e.g. retaining excavated soil on-site with low maintenance
switchgrass growth).
• Allow infrastructure to collect organic waste materials to redirect it towards compost or biochar
instead of incineration.
2. Sequestration
Sequestration is the only removal method in which carbon from the atmosphere can be taken out
instead of avoided. There are three main types of sequestration:
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Biological Carbon Sequestration: storage of carbon dioxide in vegetation, soils, and oceans.
Through photosynthesis, vegetation fix atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass and ultimately
convert into soil organic carbon (SOC) by forming organo-mineral complexes. Through
exchange with the atmosphere and other chemical processes, the ocean naturally stores carbon
dioxide as dissolved gas or carbonate sediments on the seafloor. It can also take up carbon
dioxide through photosynthesis by the phytoplankton that live within its waters.
Geological Carbon Sequestration: carbon dioxide can be stored in underground geologic
formations (rocks). There are facilities where carbon dioxide is injected into porous rocks for
long-term storage.
Technological Carbon Sequestration: involve new ways to remove and store carbon from the
atmosphere including innovations like direct air capture (DAC). With DAC, air filters capture
carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere then concentrate and transport it for storage or
conversion into useful products such as fuels and industrial chemicals. Other methods include
biochar, cryogenic carbon capture (CCC) for removing carbon dioxide from gas streams, the
use of nanomaterials, amine-based capture absorbing carbon dioxide before release into
the atmosphere, etc. There are many technologies currently in research, development, or in
operation.
archimania
Transsolar
KlimaEngineering
