maddiehalla

Yes, lead, nickel, iron, copper and lithium are all metals that in theory can be hyperaccumulated. We have spent some time on nickel, copper and lithium so far but haven't shared any of this research yet.

Good questions! The end use of the wood depends on the location of the pilot project and how close it is to a mill. Given the duration of our pilot projects, the trees will be too large to be used for anything outside of saw timber for furniture of construction. We don't allow for our seedlings to be used for pulp / paper in our landowner agreements. Decay can also refer to the decay of wood products etc.

One of the biggest issues with forest carbon in general is the duration in which the CO2 can be stored before it is released back into the atmosphere. While trees have the benefit of being able to be planted right now at scale, climate change is a problem of relative rates. Currently, trees do lack the ability to store carbon for thousands of years underground. Of course you can coppice and keep replanting them post harvest but there will be some carbon returned to the atmosphere even if all your timber goes to wood products that have a long lifespan. Trees can't solve climate change on their own but they can quickly remove carbon in a low cost way buying ourselves more time to scale up other types of CDR solutions.

would be happy to discuss with you and see if doing a pilot project make sense! land (@) livingcarbon.com

I think I mentioned this in my other comment but durability and grow rate increase are two different traits we are working on at Living Carbon. I agree it's near impossible to address both in one trait.

In the conversations we have had with landowners, they are much more interested in planting Loblolly pine or poplar, which are naturalized and / or native than Empress. I think Empress trees are very cool but hybrid poplar and loblolly pine are better suited for the types of sites we are planting seedlings on.

We would not use any trees with metal for pellets. Because the landowners we work with grow the trees for over 25 years the type of wood produced is better for saw timber or timber that is used in building materials. it wouldn't be pellet grade wood.

Wow - this post is getting a lot of great discussion. We are working on responding to the comments directly. A few key points to add that help frame how we think about the role biotechnology plays in carbon capture and removal.

Similar to how advanced biotechnology was able to help develop covid vaccines in record time, biotechnology can and should be used a tool in our fight against climate change. Living Carbon works on a broad array of biotech projects to help improve the carbon capture and sequestration of carbon underground.

We chose to share our work on photosynthesis-enhancement as an example of one of the biotechnology tools that can be utilized because 1) there is precedent in literature for similar pathways working in other crops and RuBisCO engineering has been worked on for decades 2) many of the solutions to storing carbon underground for longer are metabolically taxing to plants and can benefit from biotechnology.

In response to vague fears around genetic engineering, if Living Carbon’s work resulted in ecosystem destruction we would not have achieved any of the goals we set out to achieve as a company. We have warmed the world so quickly plants do not have the time to evolve to survive in the harsher world we have created.

It would be silly to think that our trees alone could or should stop climate change. We view each pilot project as an opportunity to study trees in different ecosystem and understand any impacts they have on underlying ecosystems.

We’re intentionally planting trees on land that human previously degraded - such as abandoned mine lands. We’re working to restore ecosystems that have already faced the consequences of human intervention, rather than integrating our trees into already-thriving wild forests.

Many of our test pilot projects include the testing of different microbial treatments to help quantify the impact on photosynthesis and the growth rate of trees.

75% of the earth’s land has already been degraded by humans. 60% of plants are struggling to survive because there are fewer animals and arable land to spread their seeds and maintain a meaningful population. Whether it’s through paving over our rivers or our urban sprawl, we’ve been modifying our world for centuries. Evolution, which is essentially sums of averages over, cannot move at the speed that humans have moved to degrade our plant and warm it.

There is not silver bullet to climate change. Many solutions like mineralization, biochar, and DAC can increase their rate of carbon removal using biotechnology and more efficiently remove carbon from the atmosphere. We need to use human technology to help reintegrate ourselves into our ecosystem and understand how carbon farming using many different carbon removal technologies can help remove carbon from our ecosystem.

Trees have proven incredibly adept at restabilizing the climate over eons. However, to continue to sustainably inhabit the earth as a species, we need to address the imbalance of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions over the scale of a human lifetime.

We’ve developed a photosynthesis enhancement trait to increase plants’ growth rate and carbon sequestration potential. Some plants have naturally developed a similar method of photosynthesis efficiency increase, known as C4 photosynthesis, which relies on anatomical changes that are only possible in a certain group of plants. Our method achieves similar carbon capture results without requiring elaborate anatomical changes. This is incredibly different from developing an organism that is resistant to glyphosate.

Additionally, while trees sequester an enormous amount of carbon, they also release it back into the air through decomposition. We are developing a range of tree species, with characteristics similar to a slow-decomposing spruce, that are able to keep carbon stored in the high-quality wood for longer.

Similar to the work of the American chestnut, we focus on studying our seedlings on land that otherwise would not be productive for carbon drawdown like abandon mine lands.

Right now we are planting them in controlled environments for further study or on land where other plants cannot grow well - such as abandoned minelands. Our goal is to draw down 1GT of carbon in lands where trees don’t currently thrive; therefore we’re working to restore ecosystems that have already faced the consequences of human intervention, rather than integrating our trees into already-thriving wild forests.

All our current poplar trees are female and do not produce pollen, thus instilling a low fertility rate while maintaining the integrity of the tree to integrate with local ecosystems.

We take an ecosystem approach to everything we do. This includes understanding the interrelationships among species in a given location as well as understanding the economics to help local land stewards thrive. With access to over 17,000 tree variations, we are focused on identifying the most helpful species for a given local area.

We focus on carbon projects that create true additionality. We focus on restoring land that has been degraded or is underperforming. We are specifically interested in abandoned mine land, reclamation land, former range land or farm land. We also work with farmers to plant trees alongside agricultural crops for shade management, riparian buffers and windbreaks.

C4 plants evolved when CO₂ partial pressure was low and there was a higher partial pressure of oxygen in the air, which is the opposite of the trajectory we see today. Therefore, we have reduced the selection pressure on C4 plants.

Rather than try to go against this evolutionary process, we have incorporated natural processes from other plants and algae to achieve the same effect of avoiding photorespiration.

We could but our main focus has been improving the land efficiency of carbon projects and allowing trees to be planted on land that would not otherwise be arable for crops and other trees. We specifically focus using our trees to help clean polluted soil by accumulating excess metals in the lignin and stems of trees. This results in natural fungal decay resistance and improved durability of wood.

We cover the cost of site prep and seedlings for landowners we partner with and retain the rights to the carbon captured by our seedlings. We then monetize the carbon captured by our seedlings.