What is the purpose of this activity?

We have all heard that trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and store the carbon in their wood. As scientists, observations like these are nice but questions are what we live for. Every good observation has questions buried inside if we look for them. If trees store carbon we can ask, "How much carbon is there in the tree outside my window?" We will start by weighing a tree in your neighborhood. Using that weight we can find out how much carbon there is in the tree. If we know how much carbon the tree is sequestering we can ask, "How much CO₂ has the tree removed from the atmosphere?" Together we can continue to ask questions based on what we discover and continue to explore our relationship with trees.  

Trees grow very slowly so like the scientists we are, we will use computer models to explore how trees grow. We can model our trees using Excel, Mathematica, and JavaScript models. If you have time, we can explore forest management and carbon sequestering using a model created by Dutch scientists.