Vegetated Highway Buffer Strips

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Vegetated Highway Buffer Strips Carbon
SequestrationBy Chris King
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Urban Forests Make Our Communities More Livable
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Forested Highway Buffers Provide a Myriad of
Benefits to a Community

• Energy Savings
• Atmospheric CO2
• Reductions
• Air Quality Benefits
• Storm Water Retention
• Aesthetics and Other
• Benefits
• Trees Set Boundaries

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Partitioning of CO2 Stored in Woody Tissue

• 51 In Trunk
• 30 In Branches Stems
• 5 In Foliage
• 14 In Root System

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Urban Forest Potential for Carbon Sequestering
and Energy Savings
400 300 200 100 0
Carbon Impact lbs./acre
Yard and Park Tree Life
Energy Savings Biomass Soil Carbon
Street Tree Life
Inner City Tree Life
0 10 20 30 40
50 60 70 80

Age of Urban Forest
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1994 Land Cover Cuyahoga County

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Seven County Overlay, Highway Layer ODNR Land
Cover Data
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Seven County Highway Clip

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Buffer of Highways

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Intersection of Highway Buffer and Land Cover Data

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Completed Intersection Of Highway Buffer and Land
Cover Data

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Magnified View of Land Cover In Buffer Area

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Summary Table of Highway Buffer Vegetation
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Developing Tree Canopy Goals

• 40 Tree Canopy Overall Target Goal
• 50 Tree Canopy In Suburban Residential
• 25 Tree Canopy In Urban Residential
• 15 Tree Canopy In Business Districts

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Guidelines To Increase CO2 Reductions In
Vegetated Highway Buffer Strips

• Maximize the use of woody plants over grass and
  herbaceous plants
• Promote species and age diversity for continuous
  canopy coverage
• Increase stocking levels where feasible and
  immediately replace dead trees to compensate
• Promote natural succession of old fields to
  forest cover

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Conclusion

• Trees play a vital role in pollution mitigation
  within vegetated buffer strips. Increasing the
  canopy coverage increases carbon storing, storm
  water retention and various other environmental
  benefits. A careful analyses of existing
  vegetated buffer areas is the first step to
  creating realistic goals. GIS can prove to be
  invaluable tool in the analyzing existing canopy
  coverage.