{"id":231278,"date":"2010-01-26T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dirt.asla.org\/?p=3736"},"modified":"2010-01-26T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T15:31:10","slug":"californian-urban-parks-are-net-emitters-of-ghgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/231278","title":{"rendered":"Californian Urban Parks Are Net Emitters of GHGs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nThe New York Times’ Dot Earth<\/em> blog reports\u00a0on a\u00a0new study on urban green space<\/a> from Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, which contends many urban green spaces emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than they absorb. This is due to the\u00a0high amounts of emissions from\u00a0lawn irrigation, fertilizer, mowing, and leaf blowing. The study argues: “Turfgrass lawns remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important ‘carbon sinks.’ However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks.”<\/p>\n

Claudia Czimczik, a researcher at University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the study, told Dot Earth<\/em>: \u201cLawns weren\u2019t initially invented to store greenhouse gases \u2014 they have a lot of other purposes such as recreation. But there is a lot of recent political discussions about lawns as carbon sinks, and if that is the case we need to consider the whole package.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Dot Earth<\/em>,\u00a0the researchers looked at four parks\u00a0in Irvine, including open lawns\u00a0and athletic fields.\u00a0Open lawns which use fertilizers emit “heat-trapping nitrous oxide,” which “offsets 10 to 30 percent of the carbon dioxide captured and stored.” Additionally, the fuel used in mowing\u00a0and leaf-blowing\u00a0”releases four times more carbon dioxide than the lawns soak up. Athletic fields fare even worse because they require more maintenance.”<\/p>\n

Czimczik said Californian parks\u00a0may be\u00a0a special case because park officials\u00a0maintain their\u00a0parks year round. More research needs to be conducted on the emissions of green spaces in other regions. She added that push mowers should also be considered.<\/p>\n

Dot Earth<\/em> points to the EPA’s GreenScapes<\/a> program, which can encourages homeowners to\u00a0think about\u00a0land, water, air, and energy use in their lawn maintenance. Unfortunately, the article leaves out the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES)<\/a>, a comprehensive new rating system, which\u00a0addresses all of\u00a0these issues\u00a0(see earlier post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Read the article<\/a> and check out the study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, read another\u00a0recent article<\/a> in The New York Times<\/em> on the 2,200-acre FreshKills Park, which will\u00a0feature native grasses,\u00a0man-made meadows and wetlands, and,\u00a0hopefully, will\u00a0prove to be a carbon sink.\u00a0\u00a0In restoring the local ecosystem, FreshKills Park is\u00a0successfully\u00a0bringing back birds.<\/p>\n

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The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog reports\u00a0on a\u00a0new study on urban green space from Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, which contends many urban green spaces emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than they absorb. This is due to the\u00a0high amounts of emissions from\u00a0lawn irrigation, fertilizer, mowing, and leaf blowing. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}