New tools to measure carbon caught in windbreak trees Trees are
great! That's pretty much a given in the green world, but
scientists haven't - until now, been able to asses how well they
work as windbreaks in agriculture, improving yields and storing
carbon. American farmers already use windbreaks. They take up a
small amount of land, help to protect both crops and livestock
from a battering and keep a check on soil erosion too. Not only
that, but trees are great ways of capturing carbon, thus
reducing the amount of the greenhouse gas that agriculture pumps
into the environment. While many of the benefits are well-known
and common sense, there has been no measurement of the carbon
capture they achieve. James Brandle, a University of Nebraska-
Lincoln professor, has examined the problem. He says that trees
grown in the narrow windbreak plantations most often used behave
differently to natural woodlands and has designed a computer
tool to measure their impact. With fellow scientists from
University of Florida, U