Culture
Where Forests Work Harder
A new study shows that trees in the Boston region grow faster and store more carbon as biomass the closer they are to developed areas.
Courtney Humphries received the 2017 David Perlman Award from the American Geophysical Union for this article.
The woods at the Mass Audubon Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary in Belmont, Massachusetts—a well-heeled suburb six miles from downtown Boston—are pleasant but commonplace, the kind of place that New Englanders go to walk their dogs or get a taste of nature. But to Andrew Reinmann, a biologist at Boston University, this is also a critical ecosystem to study.