Gizmorama - July 2, 2014

Good Morning,

Did you know that trees leave footprints? It's true. They do leave footprints... carbon footprints. Scientists chart the carbon footprint of a flowering tree's life cycle. I guess going green isn't as green as once thought.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Scientists chart carbon footprint of flowering tree's life cycle --*
WASHINGTON (UPI) - More and more people are aware of their daily carbon footprint. Humans have calculated the carbon footprint of train travel, transatlantic jets, TVs, washing machines, presidential campaigns and more. But what is the carbon footprint of a newly planted tree?

Planting a tree is largely regarded as an environmentally friendly act. But when it comes to absorbing and emitting CO2, some landscaping trees are friendlier than others. Now, thanks to researchers at the American Society for Horticultural Science, we know the carbon footprint of the flowering Forest Pansy, or redbud tree.

As part of a new study on the positive economic and environmental benefits of landscaped trees, researchers Charles R. Hall and Dewayne Ingram demonstrated how the carbon and economic footprints of a variety of plants can be calculated -- so everyone from farmers to backyard gardeners to urban planners can make more intelligent purchasing and planting decisions.

Expressed in units of tons (or kilograms) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e), a tree's carbon footprint is the measure of all greenhouse gases emitted during its life cycle -- that means its planting and care at its original nursery or farm, its transportation from birthplace to new home, and its maturing days lived out in yard, park, garden or forest.

"Knowing the carbon footprint of production and distribution components of field-grown trees will help nursery managers understand the environmental costs associated with their respective systems and evaluate potential system modifications to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," explained Ingram and Hall.

The researchers also monetized the different costs involved in raising and planting trees, including labor, equipment and transportation. The economic cost of the redbud's lifecycle was calculated at roughly $98, and its carbon footprint was measured at negative 63 kg CO2e.

"Our findings validate those of previous studies that found that input costs of production processes (machinery, water, fertilizers, pesticides, and energy) are a significant portion of the nursery variable operation costs," the authors wrote. "Thus, a more efficient use of these environmentally sensitive inputs cannot only reduce production costs for the nursery, but reduce their environmental risks or impacts as well."

The study was published in the journal HortScience.


*-- Five years after failed attempt, NASA launching another CO2-measuring satellite --*
BUELLTON, Calif. (UPI) - To help NOAA keep more precise tabs on exactly how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere, NASA is launching a satellite dedicated solely to measuring CO2.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2 for short, will orbit Earth constantly measuring and mapping carbon emissions. But not all the carbon that rises into the atmosphere remains there. About half falls back to Earth and is absorbed. OCO-2 will help scientists study this process and offer climatologists a better understanding of the role oceans, soils and forests play in the release and absorption of carbon dioxide.

"Somewhere on earth, on land, one-quarter of all our carbon emissions released through fossil fuel emissions is disappearing," David Crisp, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told The New York Times. "We can't identify the processes responsible for this. Wouldn't it be nice to know where?"

"We really don't have a lot of data right now to understand the uptake of carbon by these terrestrial ecosystems," Paul Wennberg, an OCO-2 scientist and a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Explaining how the OCO-2 will perform its job, Wennberg added: "It measures the average amount of CO2 above a place on Earth, which is different from almost all other measurements of CO2, which are measurements in a small volume of air."

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a $465-million mission, is set to launch at 2:56 a.m. on Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Buellton, California. The satellite's name has the number two attached to the end of it because this is NASA's second attempt at launch a carbon-charting spacecraft. Five years ago, the original OCO malfunctioned on takeoff and crashed into the ocean, a devastating $273 million loss.

This time around, the OCO-2 will put into orbit via a Delta 2 rocket, which has an impressive track record of successful launches. This will be the second of five satellites launched by NASA's earth sciences division this year -- all five built to study Earth.

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