It would be a pair of Canadians, wouldn't it, who would connect satellites and trees? Mikro-Tek, the brain child of Marilyn Wood and her husband Mark Kean, is a small Canadian company based in Timmins, Ontario. Like many northern Ontario companies, Mikro-Tek makes its money from the forestry industry, but in this case, it’s postmodern forestry. Forestry with a twist, for the new millennium.
Mining and forestry are naturally a big part of economic life in Timmins and both mining and forestry companies are obligated to replant land that is deforested as part of their operations. Marilyn and Mark originally began by running a simple tree nursery, supplying seedlings for the forestry industry to use in replanting projects. But ordinary seedlings that are planted out on mine sites where the topsoil is gone and nutrients are minimal generally have low survival rates. They fail to thrive. How to remedy this?
Much research later, Marilyn and Mark concluded that one key thing lacking in the soil at these degraded sites is a microbe, a mycorrhizal fungus. Such fungi are always present in healthy forests, but usually absent from land once it has been disturbed by logging or mining. So they developed a method to inoculate the roots of healthy young seedlings with the type of fungus they needed to thrive, before the seedlings were planted out.
The growth and survival rates for young trees that had received inoculations leapt by 25 percent; the need to fertilize replanted sites dropped. Our planet became a little greener, and business did well. So what next?
In this world of climate change, we have only two ways to reduce the free carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. We must either reduce our emissions or sequester the carbon that we have already released into the air. The easiest way to sequester (i. e. remove) carbon is to plant trees, then leave them alone to let them absorb carbon dioxide over their life cycle. But who can afford to plant a forest on productive land and walk away from it? No one. What about planting on wasteland? On wasteland, nothing of significance will grow. Unless…
In Chile, large areas of mountainsides are eroded from the natural effects of wind and weather and from overgrazing. This wasteland produces nothing beneficial for the people who own it, so when a charming Canadian couple appeared there a few years ago, with a mad plan involving trees, Chileans had little to lose by agreeing to give it a go. Chile has a long growing season; trees there can mature in 10 to 20 years, as opposed to 40 to 60 years for a comparable tree in Canada. In Chile, the survival rate for local varieties of trees, even on wasteland, can be boosted up to 119 percent with the inoculant that Marilyn and Mark have developed. Partnerships formed.
First, you need satellite photos for sites that are to be planted, which prove that prior to the beginning of the project no trees were present. Then GPS technology maps the site, and local people plant their land with trees inoculated with the natural fungus that helps them survive in the tough environment. This creates local employment, jobs that become long-term for those who maintain the plantations over time.
Every five years, representative samples of the trees are measured, and the increase in growth throughout the site is measured. Since half of a plant's biomass is carbon, any increase in the biomass (growth) on the site means that there's a corresponding increase in the amount of carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere. Healthy plantations in Chile can sequester between 25 and 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare every year. (According to carbon offset experts Zerofootprint, 25 tonnes of CO2 is approximately equivalent to the annual carbon emissions from four automobiles, or the annual emissions from heating six Canadian homes.)
The partners provide their measurements and satellite pictures to the United Nations, proving that the trees were planted and they remain in place and healthy. The carbon they sequester becomes the basis of a carbon credit. Then, the partners in the project have that carbon credit certified and sold on one of the developing carbon credit markets. Profit is created, a mountainside in Chile is green, and it provides again for its people.
Canadians. Tech and trees.
Joan Barton is a former family lawyer and current rural entrepreneur. She can be reached via the Women's Portal.
Photo by pfly. Courtesy of Creative Commons
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