Southern Research Station Headquarters - Asheville, NC
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Issue 16
Helping Industrial Landowners Offset Carbon
by Ted Leininger
SRS research developed the planting technology that’s being used in a unique partnership to reforest the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV). Duke Energy, one of the largest utility companies in the South, is partnering with GreenTrees® in a reforestation program designed to offset carbon dioxide emitted from the utility’s daily operations by planting trees on 1,700 acres in the LMAV, which includes flood plains in parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
GreenTrees® is a privately managed forest restoration and carbon sequestration program created for landowners within the seven states of the LMAV. The program, created by C21, LLC, seeks to restore open and marginal farmland in the Nation’s largest watershed to hardwood forest ecosystems capable of sustainably sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide, providing habitat for wildlife, and benefiting landowners committed to the longterm restoration of their properties.
"SRS scientists Emile Gardiner and John Stanturf - along with partners from forest industry, universities, and state and Federal agencies - pioneered the protocol used by GreenTrees®, which shelters young hardwoods with fast-growing cottonwoods," says Ted Leininger, project leader for the SRS Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research based in Stoneville, MS.
Research to support the practice was conducted over the past 15 years, primarily at the Sharkey Restoration Research and Demonstration Site in Sharkey County, MS. Stanturf currently leads the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science in Athens, GA, and Gardiner is a research forester at the Center for Bottomland Hardwoods Research.
Gardiner, Stanturf, and their collaborators used a variety of silvicultural practices on the Sharkey site plots to establish tree species native to the LMAV, which, before European settlement, supported 25 million acres of bottomland forest. Factors such as soil fertility, flooding duration, and competing vegetation contributed to determining what type of stands would grow well.
The method adopted by GreenTrees® involves using cottonwoods to serve as nurse trees for the hardwood seedlings. Once established, the cottonwoods provide an environment that promotes the growth of straight stems in the slower growing hardwoods, thus providing the potential for quality timber for landowners desiring this environmental benefit. The cottonwoods develop forest structure very quickly, providing habitat for many bird species found in neighboring bottomland hardwood forests.
Having seen and valued the carbon sequestration, wildlife, and timber benefits of the cottonwood-hardwood planting mix, GreenTrees® consulted with Gardiner and Leininger recently to adapt the initial silvicultural techniques to include planting 302 hardwoods and 302 cottonwoods per acre as a launching pad for their carbon offsets program in the LMAV. The long-term plan for the program builds on increments of 70-year leases with participating landowners. These leases add longevity to forest restoration, increase wildlife habitat and populations, and allow carbon to be sequestered for longer periods of time.
Duke Energy’s chief policy, strategy, and regulatory officer called this approach "the most innovative afforestation and carbon offset project in the United States."
For more information:
Ted Leininger at 662-686-3178 or tleininger@fs.fed.us
