This article identifies bamboo as an important carbon sink, assessing its potential for sequestering carbon by 2050 and evaluating the economic costs and benefits of enacting this climate solution.
This resource includes an overview of bamboo and the feasibility of increasing bamboo production to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This fact sheet details how the authors reached their conclusions by presenting their calculation methodology and scientific sources.
The article also provides ways individuals can contribute to the solution.
Additional Prerequisites
Before reading the article, students should understand the causes of climate change and how nature-based carbon sequestration works.
This interactive table of solutions can be used to show students the rankings of solutions by scenario on the Drawdown website and compare the potential of bamboo production to other solutions.
Differentiation
In more advanced classes, students can practice reading scientific papers by reading the article's references at the bottom of the resource.
Have students investigate where increased bamboo production is taking place and its limitations.
Economics classes can use all of the financial information presented in the article to evaluate the profits available and the many uses of bamboo for businesses.
This resource can also be used in math classes during lessons about data analysis or quantitatively assessing the impact of different climate solutions.
This media literacy activity can be used to learn more about carbon sequestration and carbon storage.
Scientist Notes
This resource makes the case for utilizing bamboo to sequester carbon and slow the effects of climate change. Bamboo is a fast growing, robust member of the grass family and could make a real difference in sequestering carbon in land sinks. A solution to restoring degraded forests is presented along with their methodology, results, and discussion. This proposal is a great way to get students thinking about what else can be done to address climate change and how thinking outside of the box by restoring the land can lead to great changes. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS-ESS2-6 Develop a quantitative model to describe the cycling of carbon among the hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-6 Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.
ETS1: Engineering Design
HS-ETS1-1 Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.
HS-ETS1-4 Use a computer simulation to model the impact of proposed solutions to a complex real-world problem with numerous criteria and constraints on interactions within and between systems relevant to the problem.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Economics
D2.Eco.3.9-12 Analyze the ways in which incentives influence what is produced and distributed in a market system.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
