carbon sequestration

Take a deep breath

Take a deep breath

In the first episode of this climate change series, we met the stars of our drama: the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and others. We know the levels of these gases are increasing in the atmosphere because of the pioneering work of Charles Keeling, whose observations atop Mauna Loa on the big island of Hawai’i showed a steady increase in CO2 from the early 1950s to the present.

How do we know the source of Keeling’s extra CO2 is in fact human activity in the industrial era and not simply natural variability in atmospheric CO2?

Hinewai

Hinewai

Over the past 32 years, the Maurice White Trust has transformed large swathes of its 1500 hectare (3700 acres) Hinewai Reserve from steep, gorse-infested ex-farmland back to its pre-settlement native forest ecosystems on Banks Peninsula south of Christchurch, New Zealand. The work began as an unlikely partnership between botanist and artist Hugh Wilson, who developed a passion for the plants and wildlife of his childhood home, and Maurice White, a local businessman with a passion for native birds. Together they established Hinewai as an experiment in botanical succession as a means to eliminate gorse and re-establish native forest ecosystems in catchments that run from the hilltops above Akaroa down to the sea. Their story is told in a wonderful video recently released: Fools and Dreamers.