Project lead: Samuel Booth

Carbon on your street, in collaboration with Nottingham City Council (NCC) and Bluesky International Limited, aims to map carbon storage in our city's trees and green space topsoil. In the transition to Nottingham’s carbon neutral targets (CN28), taking a baseline of natural carbon stores is vital in quantifying future efforts to sequester carbon to offset emissions. In this project we used remote sensing of tree location and size via the 2019 National Tree Map (Bluesky) to model individual tree carbon using allometric equations. Topsoil organic carbon down to 30 cm depth was also estimated, using soil cores collected from NCC managed green spaces. We estimate 485959 tonnes of organic carbon are stored in the topsoil of NCC green spaces, 141165 tonnes of organic carbon in NCC managed trees, and 512741 tonnes of organic carbon in privately managed trees, totalling 1139865 tonnes of organic carbon (1.14 Tg). We have also mapped this data spatially, to identify high carbon density areas, and to identify carbon sparse areas suitable for targeted efforts to increase sequestration efforts. Future work should focus on conducting the same analysis on subsequent National Tree Maps to assess subsequent carbon sequestration, carbon storage potential of the full soil profile, and incorporating wider privately managed green spaces (e.g. gardens). We have shared this methodology with the NCC GIS team, the results are being incorporated into the CN28 strategy, and we are exploring avenues to conduct similar work across the region in collaboration with the Midlands Net Zero Hub