University of Maryland, College Park
IN-5: Carbon Mitigation Project Development

The University of Maryland has supported two carbon mitigation projects that have adapted methodologies to develop innovative carbon offset protocols. One project is still in development and focuses on urban forestry on university campuses. Students in the Department of Geographical Sciences are creating a standardized methodology to study the forest carbon storage capacity and carbon sequestration flux of urban forests on university campuses. Starting with the University of Maryland, this group has contacted SIMAP and the University of New Hampshire to identify opportunities to support university forest carbon monitoring. Adapting the Duke University Urban Forestry carbon offset initiative’s peer-reviewed protocol, this group aims to develop a peer-reviewed carbon offset protocol that allows universities to annually monitor forest carbon flux and include sequestered carbon from managed forests in their greenhouse gas emissions inventories as a sink. Learn more at: https://geog.umd.edu/project/campus-forest-carbon-project.

The second project was developed by UMD professor Dr. Qingbin Cui in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The project focuses on green paving, and established a methodology that provides a framework for the quantification of a greenhouse gas emission reductions associated with the production and installation of Foam Stabilized Base (FSB) and/or asphalt emulsions as substitutes for Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) in road construction projects located in the U.S. The methodology is VERRA certified, and functions through the Pavenext portal.