We now sit in a cold den, the fire in the fireplace distinguished from the tears that were shed by the trees murdered for their bodies, if trees could cry that is. We sit well into the early morning, listening to the life that occupies the world when the sun is gone to bed. The blank book is in our hands and the future is untold. The pen on our lap is chilled to the touch, filled with regret from our historical past. It wonders how it could have done such a thing, such a terrible thing to the one person in the world who is always everywhere but never seen. How could it have hurt her when all she wanted was the best for all of us? Mother Nature did not deserve this. The human race is an undeserving child of its mothers grace and patients. However, patience runs thin over a long distance. We only have so long until she snaps and does whatever it takes to correct our mistakes, not without punishing us first. The punishment being the unrelenting end of man kind as we know it.
As I go back to Lady Bird lake for my observations, I notice that nothing has really been changing. The April showers that occurred raised the water levels in the lake and some branches and leaves from surrounding trees have fallen to the ground but nothing serious has been noted. I guess that the fallen
branches could be seen as a good thing by allowing ground dwelling animals to build shelters or just generally live among the tree debris. Tree debris, that is a human phrase with a negative connotation. When I think of the word debris, I think of trash, of something ugly, of something that has no purpose and should be removed. This so called plant debris can give life to many animals, other plants, and bacteria who live around it and can see a purpose for it. Eventually, it will be degraded by the earth and used as nutrients for the organisms surrounding.
A study published by David Nowak in 2002, titled Carbon storage and sequestration by urban trees in the USA, looked at the role that carbon storage has on potentially reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. That is very similar to the topic that I am writing this blog on. The correlation between carbon storage and plant and animal diversity. Nowak averages that trees in urban areas store about a combined total of 700 million tonnes of carbon and their rate of sequestration is approximately 
22.8 million tonnes of carbon per year. That’s a little over 14 billion dollars worth of carbon. The paper concluded that “Urban forests likely will have a greater impact per area of tree canopy cover than non-urban forests due to faster growth rates, increased proportions of large trees, and possible secondary effects of reduced building energy use and consequent carbon emissions from power plants. However, urban tree maintenance emissions can offset some of the carbon gains by urban forest systems.” I believe that that is a true statement. Larger trees means that there is a possibility that large branches will fall on the ground, buildings and/or cars. The physical damages and the cost of the damages can be substantial and frankly, counterproductive towards sustainability. There needs to be a happy medium where trees are free to grow as they please and if they need to be maintained, the lowest possible, most sustainable maintenance cost should be used.
It is projected that the effects of climate change will be seen at increased rates at the poles of earth and at high altitudes. There is a paper that I found that has to do with just that and the effects of carbon storage on the warming of the earth. The paper, Ecosystem Carbon Storage in Arctic Tundra Reduced by Long-Term Nutrient Fertilization (published in 2004 by Michelle Mack) studied fertilization on Alaskan tundra plants and found that long term fertilization decreases the amount of carbon (and nitrogen) stored in the deep, soil layers and increased the carbon located in the plant litter. The conclusion being that the “projected release of soil nutrients associated with high-latitude warming may further amplify carbon release from soils, causing a net loss of ecosystem carbon and a positive feedback to climate warming”. This worries me for the simple fact that plants are starting to not rely on storing carbon for nutrients which in
turn decreases the atmospheric carbon uptake. This may also be an indicator that plants should not be fertilized because they may become dependent on the fertilizer for nutrients and not store carbon. A paper, A Review of Nitrogen Fertilizer and Conservation Tillage Effects on Soil Organic Carbon Storage, published in 2006 by R. Alvarez shows similar findings but it was a little harder to read and was also done with nitrogen in addition to carbon. There was one other study that I came across that compared carbon and nitrogen interactions to carbon storage. Its title was Increased Tree Carbon Storage in Response to Nitrogen Deposition in the US (R. Quinn Thomas, 2009). It concluded that nitrogen deposits increased carbon storage only by 0.31 Pg of carbon each year.
While looking up information on tree debris for the City of Austin, I came across something I found to be interesting. Austin has a department titled Austin Resource Recovery, formerly Solid Waste Services. This can go back to what I said earlier about positive and negative phrases. The word “waste” has a negative connotation and can be paired with the thought of using something up completely. However, the word “recovery” has a positive connotation along with it and can be paired with thoughts of rehabilitation and restoration. Reading further into what Austin Resource Recovery’s goals were, I learned that the City of Austin has a goal of reducing the amount of trash that people send to its landfills to 10% by 2040. In other words, that is reusing 90% of what the general public views as trash. If you think about it, children born in the next few years will be young adults, around the same age as I am today, and reusing 90% of what they handle. They will know how to reduce, reuse and recycle effectively. Austin Resource Recovery’s visions is “to be the national Zero Waster leader in the transformation from traditional integrated waste collection to sustainable resource recovery”. That’s a pretty big vision and it all starts with doing. The art of actually practicing what you preach. Picking up the pen filled with regret and writing with purpose, excitement, positivity, and action. For without action, there is no reaction, and without purpose and excitement, the reaction will have no direction and will ultimately back fire and turn into chaos.
Works Cited:
Alvarez, R. “A review of nitrogen fertilizer and conservation tillage effects on
soil organic carbon storage.” Soil Use and Management 21.1 (2005): 38-52.
Print.
“Austin Resource Recovery.” austintexas.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2016.
<http://www.austintexas.gov/department/austin-resource-recovery/about>.
Mack, Michelle. “Ecosystem carbon storage in arctic tundra reduced by long-term
nutrient fertilization.” Nature (2004): 440-43. Print.
Nowak, David. “Carbon storage and sequestration by urban trees in the USA.”
Environmental Pollution 116.3 (2002): 381-89. Print.
Thomas, R. Quinn. “Increased tree carbon storage in response to nitrogen
deposition in the US.” Nature Geoscience (2010): 13-17. Print.