Ken Van Rees wants trees, and lots of them.
To be precise, he wants to cut down a tree in as many farm shelter belts as he can to see how much carbon that tree is storing.
The University of Saskatchewan agroforestry expert is heading a research project under the federal agriculture department’s Agricultural Greenhouse Gases Program (AGGP), a five-year project launched last year and designed to help farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions through better use of shelter belts, irrigation and forage production.
Van Rees, as director of the university’s Centre for Northern Agroforestry and Afforestation, is looking at how shelter belt design can maximize benefits to the environment and farmers.
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The trick is to get the trees.
He needs them to develop biomass equations that will determine how much carbon is stored in trees both above and underground.
Ideally, the trees should come from different soil zones and be different species, heights and diameters.
“They need to be living trees,” Van Rees said. “I need the leaves too.”
Farmers haven’t been too receptive to the idea of giving up a tree. There is no incentive other than participating in research that could benefit them down the road. The trees won’t be replaced by the research project.
“We need to start building a database of farmers who would be willing to let us cut down a tree,” Van Rees said.
“We’re going to need a lot of trees from across the province to develop our models to do these predictions.”
Researchers from across the country are involved in this project.
Joe Piwowar of the University of Regina is using remote sensing to identify all of the province’s field and farm shelter belts.
Mount Allison University professor Colin Laroque is researching how climate has affected the growth of six species by examining tree ring cores.
Agricultural economist Suren Kulshreshtha from the U of S is looking at the economics of having a shelter belt versus not having one.
Other projects include looking at the soil carbon in shelter belts and how it is different from that in agricultural soil.
The agroforestry projects under the AGGP are part of Canada’s commitment to the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases. Canada was a founding member of the alliance, which now includes more than 30 member countries.
Farmers who wish to donate a tree or two to the project can contact Doug Jackson at the U of S by e-mailing doug.jackson@usask.ca or phoning 306-966-4883.
