Utilising hedgerows for landscape scale carbon sequestration.

Presentation given at the 2018 Farm Woodland Forum meeting held at the Allerton Project, UK by Matthew Axe, Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester: Utilising hedgerows for landscape scale carbon sequestration. Hedgerows are a prominent agroforestry system in England and Wales, an estimated 456 000 km of these being actively managed. The use of hedgerows to sequester atmospheric carbon (C) was proposed by Falloon et al. 2004. Their models for field boundaries showed between 0.1 to 2.4% of 1990 UK CO2-C emissions could be sequestered, however, hedgerow options focused on planting new hedges on existing arable field margins. Following a study of hedgerow C stocks on a lowland arable farm, the means in which existing hedgerow features could sequester C was scrutinised. This considers how long-term management cycles affect C stocks.