CAREER: Intra-Urban Variability in Carbon Deposition: Rates, Pathways, and Determinants

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GEOGRAPHY SPATIAL SCIENCES (GSS) PROGRAM ABSTRACT This Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) award will support research that will contribute new knowledge about urban carbon cycle science by assessing the role of vegetation in the capture, cycling, and fate of carbon in urban environments. As a major source and sink for carbon, urban areas are a frontier in understanding changing environments and the carbon cycle. The investigator will study the extent to which city trees function as urban air filters, capturing carbon particles from the atmosphere and then depositing them into soils for long-term storage. Because of carbon?s powerful influence on atmospheric radiative mechanisms, understanding its removal and input into the soil is key to developing and implementing short-term environmental mitigation strategies. In addition, understanding the factors that contribute to carbon removal in urban areas could help improve air quality for urban residents. The research will be conducted at the edge of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and will quantify the filtration of carbon particulates. The project will open new pathways into science, technology engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for geography and education majors, and it provides research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students. Project results will have socioeconomic implications by providing opportunities to impact urban architecture and configuration while understanding the complex urban forms that drive biogeochemical patterns and processes. The investigator will quantify rates, pathways, and determinants of carbon deposition at fine spatial scales in a rapidly growing city that is representative of many urban areas in semi-arid regions of the world. The investigator will explore answers to three core questions: (1) What is the spatial variability in the deposition rates of black carbon on urban tree canopies? (2) What is the role of throughfall and litterfall in the flux of carbon to the soil? (3) What are the urban form components that control spatial patterns of black carbon deposition? High-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, geospatial data, and field-measured vegetation characteristics will be integrated to determine the most important factors contributing to spatial variability in the filtering of carbon particulates. A statistical model will be developed to provide estimates of carbon removal by trees at the city scale. The LiDAR-based scaling approach is potentially transformative, because it has broad applicability to a range of scientific questions across diverse ecosystems.