Our big issue right now is how to handle our 26,000 acres of forest land. What are other schools with large land holdings doing with that component?
There is a huge amount of variation in how schools are handling this, largely because there is some controversy as to whether measuring and reporting it as a sink gives a false impression regarding a school’s carbon footprint (that it is lower than it is.) The reported emissions should really just be anthropogenic. On the other hand, many want to calculate their land-based “sunk” carbon as a tool in being able to communicate the value of keeping campus land holdings undeveloped. The Calculator gives you a space to note it, but it doesn’t actually help you measure it, as you’ve probably noted. In many cases, only reforestation projects are reported as part of the actual inventory. And most have not included land-related carbon sinks in their first go-round unless there has already been some previous work trying to calculate the associated carbon sink of forest lands.
Related Questions
- Our big issue right now is how to handle our 26,000 acres of forest land. What are other schools with large land holdings doing with that component?
- Why didn you develop Tallowood Ridge into large lots, say, one or two acres each, like all the land south of the ridge along Left Bank Road?
- Do the forested acres located within a parcel in which land was converted to agricultural land qualify as agricultural forest?
