Over 25,000 Trees Planted!

This spring and summer we planted over 25,500 trees in our Beanblossom Creek Conservation Area to help restore native bottomland forest habitat at Sam Shine Foundation Preserve, Fix-Stoeling Preserve, and Skylar’s World Forest. Our Summer Intern Ben Sebastian, who helped by hand-planting areas the tractor couldn’t reach, wanted to know more about the impact such a large tree planting will have on this area as these new forests mature. Ben calculated that the ~26,000 trees we planted this year will sequester up to 228,110,415.60 pounds of CO2 in 90 years… enough to offset 22,493 cars.

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by promoting photosynthesis and storing carbon in soil, forests, and wetlands. Learn more about carbon offsets in this illustrated guide from The Nature Conservancy.  Using their tools, we calculated that Sycamore’s 10,515 acres of protected land stores more than 525,505 metric tons of carbon. That’s a big win for nature in southern Indiana!

Graph to the right shows pounds of CO2 sequestered by our tree planting after 10-90 years if 30%, 50%, or 70% of the planted trees die, calculated with iTreeTools.org.

Photo of tree seedling planted this summer by Ellen Bergan