Sink Ability of Several Urban Trees to Carbon dioxide (CO2) (Case Study in Green Belt of Pajajaran Street-Bogor).

Abstract

The global warming happens due to high concentration of certain gasses in the air which are called Green Houses Gasses (GHGs). The global warming is mostly caused by human activities and industries. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHGs which caused a variety of activities in both cities moving or not moving as households, hotels, industries, motor vehicles and other activities require driving and heating energy partly derived from the combustion of fossil fuels such as diesel, kerosene and coal. Increased levels of CO2 in the urban air can be overcome with the forest one city. The increment of CO2 concentration in the city can be decreased by implementing urban trees. Carbon dioxide will be absorbed and converted into oxygen through photosynthesis process. The selection of urban trees is needed in order to decrease CO2 effectively. Therefore the study on carbon dioxide sink ability of urban plants should be conducted. The CO2 sink ability of urban trees was measured using carbohydrate method. The carbon dioxide mass was obtained by converting the carbohydrate mass produced from photosynthesis. Other data that were collected consisted of total and width of leaves. More leaves per tree have higher ability of carbon dioxide sink. Wider leaf has higher ability of carbon dioxide sink too. The ability of CO2 sinks from nine species of urban trees is stated in cm2 of leaf width per hour (g CO2/cm2/hour). The result shows that the ability of C. manghas is 8,391 x 10-4; A. mangium is 3,430 x 10-4; S. macrophylla is 2,547 x 10-4; B. purpurea is 2,056 x 10-4; M. calabura is 1,843 x 10-4; F. elastica is 1,466 x 10-4; F. benjamina is 0,787 x 10-4; P. indicus is 0,630 x 10-4; and S. mahagoni is 0,499 x 10-4. It can be concluded that C. manghas, F. elastica and S. macrophylla are the most effective in sinking the CO2.