Douglass Jacobs, an associate professor of forestry and natural
resources, found that American chestnuts grow much faster and
larger than other hardwood species, allowing them to sequester
more carbon than other trees over the same period. And since
American chestnut trees are more often used for high-quality
hardwood products such as furniture, they hold the carbon longer
than wood used for paper or other low-grade materials.
"Maintaining or increasing forest cover has been identified as
an important way to slow climate change," said Jacobs, whose
paper was published in the June issue of the journal Forest
Ecology and Management. "The American chestnut is an incredibly
fast-growing tree. Generally the faster a tree grows, the more
carbon it is able to sequester. And when these trees are
harvested and processed, the carbon can be stored in the
hardwood products for decades, maybe longer." At the beginning
of the last century, the chestnut blight, caused by a fungus,
rapidly spread throughout the American ches