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Research
Impacts |
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Maine
Agricultural & Forest Experiment Station |
MAFES Impacts
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MAFES Research Facilities
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Developing Carbon-Credit Markets
 In carbon-credit markets, traders buy and sell
certificates that represent specified amounts of allowable
carbon-related emissions, or reductions or offsets in emissions. For
example, a coal-fired generating plant purchases credits from tree
farm or the owners of a forest preserve because the trees capture
and store carbon. With its extensive forests, Maine is one of the
states leading the national trend towards developing carbon-credit
markets. Consequently, understanding the relationship between tree
age and productivity has become a critical issue. Trees reach their
peak productivity well before halfway through their normal life
spans, and productivity declines beyond that point. UMaine
researchers are using reciprocal grafting between trees of various
ages to explore how and why tree productivity changes with age.
Understanding these mechanisms and their interaction with
environmental constraints are essential to estimating and the
maximizing the carbon-credit exchange value of forests. (Photo
Credit: Mike Day)
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