The prospects for UK treescapes are contingent upon future generations recognising and valuing the benefits resulting from the varied treescapes of the UK. This WP will ask how different treescapes contribute to UK targets to adapt to and mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration and storage. This carbon store is moderately understood in rural woodlands but is almost unknown for urban trees in non-woodland or forest settings. This WP focuses on providing the key environmental baseline data to enable CYP to recognise how they can relate to their treescapes. The CYP involved in WP3 and WP4 will be ‘twinned’ with treescapes within their lived experience to balance their evolving carbon footprint with the changing treescapes they have partnered with. 2.1. Weatherall and Carr will adopt a tree-twinning approach whereby they will compare and contrast the health, vitality and carbon accounting between similar species of trees to provide calibration and analogue data for upscaling of the carbon potential of trees in different UK treescapes. This will include trees that might not necessarily be found in ‘semi-natural’ environments. This will for the first time draw together innovative 3D mapping approaches (Terrestrial Laser Scanning, UaV and 3D uCT- Computed Tomography), that can be upscaled to stand, street, park and landscape scale treescapes. Carr, Weatherall and Owen will apply novel methods to assess and quantify above- and below-ground biomass and carbon storage to refine particularly our understanding of how trees in different settings sequester and store carbon over time. These will be used to revise allometric relationships and develop a toolbox to infer carbon stocks of different treescapes, which will be scaled-up to local and ward-level assessments of carbon sequestration and storage, to complement existing data and refine citizen-science approaches including (with our project partner Forest Research) the i-Trees survey. 2.2 Carr, Ryfield, Weatherall and Owen will integrate the multi-scale mapping of treescapes with the assessment of carbon gain in 2.1 to ‘twin’ CYP with urban and rural treescapes investigated in this project. Quantifying the evolving carbon footprints of CYP and balancing these with the different treescapes of the project over time offers CYP a robust basis for positive and hopeful behavioural engagement, future stewardship and ‘ownership’ of UK treescapes. This offers a pathway to enabling and empowering CYP to envision a hopeful future for themselves associated with future treescapes (see WP3).
Year 1: The PDRF (Owen, based in Cumbria) will undertake a systematic literature review of research in carbon accounting for trees in urban and rural settings.
Year 1: Identification of tree twinning sites with children and young people (sites to include parks and open spaces across Greater Manchester owned by Local Authorities and Charities).
Stage 3 Year 1: Pilot Study of methods on a typical individual tree within sites to identify site specific challenges (especially for belowground data collection in the urban environment).
Years 2 and 3: Refine methods incorporating input from children and young people.
Years 2 and 3: Full study of trees using the novel methods.
Year 3: Data analysis to compare carbon storage in the above-ground biomass and below-ground biomass and soil of twinned trees. Task 6. Upscaling of data to urban and rural treescapes
Years 1, 2 and 3: Knowledge exchange, what have children and young people learned with the scientists, and vise-versa with a focus on the opportunities and barriers to planting particular trees and their affordances