By prioritizing nature-based interventions, such as developing new forests or protecting and restoring current woodlands, Lawrenceville can contribute to controlling carbon emissions. Using digital resources like Restor and the EnRoads simulator, our community can make an impact by interpreting data and creating new ecological strategies to capture carbon emissions. Schools like Lawrenceville can make a difference reducing global warming.
Lawrentians know about the pond and K-loop, but many Lawrentians may be unfamiliar with land the school owns but doesn’t use. Out of the 640 acres, there are 150 acres (39%) of natural habitat. This land needs to be maintained to help protect from dangerous effects of climate change.
Lawrenceville is making strides to restore the school’s ecology; In the past few summers, ecology interns identified and cut down invasive species in the Hamill Woods. Invasive plants disrupt the native ecosystems, changing the makeup of local soil microbes, which prevent tree regeneration. Many of the non-native species can grow rapidly, but they are not a good carbon sink; native trees and plants are adapted to thrive in local conditions and tend to function better as carbon capture mechanisms. Nature-based removal like this could make a statistically significant impact on our world. The MIT/Climate Interactive EnRoads climate simulator suggests that a “high” level of nature-based carbon removal, alone, could decrease the estimated temperature by 2100 from 3.3 degrees Celsius to 3.1.
The preservation of existing woodlands and development of future forests has potential to also aid this issue. This is because trees do an incredible job of capturing and holding carbon in the wood. Old forests have a less dynamic carbon cycle because there are fewer trees in an old-growth stand, so the rate of carbon sequestration is slower. As the trees grow they will sequester more carbon, therefore developing new forests is a good long-term investment.
Thomas Crowther, an ecologist in the Department of Environmental System Science at ETH Zurich, advocates in the TED talk “The global movement to restore nature’s biodiversity” for nature-based intervention. He predicts that soil and vegetation can capture up to 30% of the atmosphere’s excess carbon, and also that there’s “0.9 billion hectares” where “over one trillion of new trees can exist.” This information motivated him to create Restor, an open data platform for digital ecosystems where viewers can see, add, and track the progress of locations where restoration is occurring. If people know what to plant, and where, the health of trees and soil improves, boosting the ecosystems which are necessary for life on earth.
Figure 1: Map of Restor projects in the Lawrenceville Area (blue and yellow dots). In a large radius, there is only one tracked restoration project.
A narrator of Restor’s promotional video begins by saying, “Without forest, without trees, no life can continue, so for me it is life.” The life he is describing goes beyond the scientific need for trees to provide humans with the necessary oxygen for cellular respiration. His sentiment connects to Aldo Leopold’s definition of “community.” Community not only includes friends and family, but also nature, wildlife, and animals. If we broaden our definition of a community, we will care more, and we will be more conscious about how our actions affect the environment around us. Restor is a way for us, Lawrentians, to become a part of restoration, not just help the cause.
While economics play a crucial role in improving our ecosystem, it does not solely determine land use. Our community’s decisions also play a part in shaping the environment around us. In Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac he states “which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land-use. This is simply not true. An innumerable host of actions and attitudes, comprising perhaps the bulk of all land relations, is determined by the land-users’ tastes and predilections, rather than by his purse.” This statement by Leopold argues that land-use is not only determined by finances, but can be shaped by the values and attitudes of the community around it. In Lawrenceville’s case, the decisions to restore nature and forests on campus, do not only reflect economic gain and interests, but can be influenced by ecological health in the community. This would involve more community engagement which could end up providing long-term sustainability and improve the ecosystem for generations to come.
Figure 2: Map of Camp Altiplano, a restoration camp in the steppe of south-eastern Spain.
The yellow dots in Figure 2 represent plots of land that are being recorded for their development. Visibly close to this site, there are many other restoration projects. The comparison between The Greater Princeton area and areas of Spain show that we have work to do.
Works Consulted
Crowther, T. (2020, October). The global movement to restore nature’s biodiversity [Video]. Ted. https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_crowther_the_global_movement_to_restore_nature_s_biodiversity
En-Roads. (n.d.). Climate Interactive. Retrieved February 25, 2025, from https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=25.2.0
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. In Braiding SweetGrass (pp. 48-59). Milkweed Editions.
Leopold, A. (2020). A Sand County Almanac. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Norman, C., & Kreye, M. (2023, August 22). How Forests Store Carbon. Penn State Extension. Retrieved February, 2025, from https://extension.psu.edu/how-forests-store-carbon#:~:text=Forests%20sequester%20or%20store%20carbon,and%20released%20on%20a%20cycle
“This is Restor.” Video, 3:12. Restor Eco. Posted November 10, 2023. Accessed February 25, 2025. https://about.restor.eco.
Zhang, J. (2022, August). Restoration ecology interns work to save campus old growth forest. Lawrenceville.org. Retrieved February 13, 2025, from https://www.lawrenceville.org/life-at-lawrenceville/news-events/news-detail/~board/school-news/post/restoration-ecology-interns-work-to-save-campus-old-growth-forest.
