Carbon Impacts of Duke's Campus Drive Realignment and New Campus
Abstract
Carbon Impacts of Duke’s Campus Drive Realignment and New Campus Plan
By
Joseph B. Jackson
April 2011
Senior administrators at Duke University have determined the need to build a new Central
Campus. This new campus has been described as a community developed to advance academic
endeavors, to promote collaborative learning and to foster interdisciplinary research.
It will be built on generous property holdings along portions of the existing Campus
Drive which will be realigned to remain the significant transportation spine connecting
Duke’s destination components.
A variety of natural resources will be impacted by the development of the new campus.
Greatly impacted will be the trees that currently exist in and around the area designated
for the new campus. These trees have been identified as belonging to one of three
conditions of vegetative structures. These structures are defined as cultivated canopy,
managed woodland, and emergent woodland. Trees within these structures range from
mature hardwood trees to those planted in open lawns to trees densely populated in
natural areas.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the “greenhouse” gases thought to be contributing to
an increase in atmospheric temperatures that traps radiation in the atmosphere. The
trees existing in the planned site of the new campus store and sequester carbon. For
clarification, the difference between the two processes is that stored carbon represents
present-day mass and sequestered carbon represents the growth of a tree from one year
to the next. Since the trees in these conditions of vegetative structure sequester
CO2 and affect the emission of CO2 from surrounding areas, they play a meaningful
role in helping to combat increasing levels of atmospheric CO2.
A projection on the number of trees that will be lost on the affected properties will
be made and the potential impact on carbon will be evaluated. Tools and procedures
will be recommended to help manage and mitigate potential carbon loss.
Type
Master's projectSubject
Carbon in Trees at DukePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3700Citation
Jackson, Joseph (2011). Carbon Impacts of Duke's Campus Drive Realignment and New Campus. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3700.Collections
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