WHY TREES?
In the Fall of 2020, YSU Legacy Forests was created in response to the growing threat of climate change. Climate change, or global warming, is the warming of our Earth's climate due to human emissions of greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide, one of the most important gasses, is produced from human activities such as electricity and heat generation, transportation fueling, and industrial emissions.
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Humans also produce carbon dioxide as a result of respiration, or our breathing.
Human breathing is not considered another emission source, but part of the natural oxygen cycle. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as part of their photosynthesis, or food-making process with the sun.
As a result, they release fresh oxygen for us to breathe.
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Forests act as the lungs of the Earth for this very reason. Forests naturally help absorb, or sequester, carbon dioxide while replenishing the oxygen we need to breathe.
TREE MATH
1 acre of maturing forest in Youngstown =
8 tons of carbon dioxide sequester per year
That's huge! 8 tons of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the emissions of a residential home for a year, or nearly 2 years of driving for the typical driver. Residents of the Mahoning Valley contribute about 20 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year.
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In time, as we expand our project sites, we will be able to continue sequestering greater amounts of carbon dioxide from the Youngstown area.
With these facts, our mission became simple: create micro forests around the Youngstown region to sequester carbon dioxide in order to reduce our environmental footprint.
