Environment

There is not a backyard plant that combats global warming and provides erosion control like bamboo does. Time Magazine and Newsweek identified that planting of bamboo is one of the top things American’s can do to help fight global warming.

Bamboo minimizes CO2 gases and generates up to 35% more oxygen then equivalent stand of trees.

2.47 acres of bamboo sequesters 62 tons of CO2/year
2.47 acres of young forest sequesters 15 tons of CO2/year

How it works

Bamboo removes CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis by using carbon as an energy source and converting it into plant tissue which releases oxygen (O2) as a by-product
Bamboo…
• helps retain water in the watershed
• can be harvested annually
• needs no replanting after harvesting
• is an effective erosion control plant and natural control barrier due to its widespread root system and large canopy
• reduces runoff, prevents massive soil erosion
• sustains riverbanks
• helps mitigate water pollution due to its high nitrogen consumption
• requires little attention during its growing/production cycle
• is well suited for agroforestry and healthy ecosystems

EROSION CONTROL ...

A peerless erosion control agent,. it's net like root system create an effective mechanism for watershed protection, stitching the soil together along fragile riverbanks, deforested areas, and in places prone to earthquakes and mud slides. Because of their wide-spreading root system, uniquely shaped leaves, and dense litter on the forest floor, the sum of stem flow rate and canopy intercept of bamboo is 25% which means that bamboo greatly reduces rain run off, preventing massive soil erosion and keeping up to twice as much water in the watershed. Bamboo is a pioneering plant and can be grown in soil damaged by overgrazing and poor agricultural techniques. Unlike with most trees proper harvesting does not kill the bamboo plant so topsoil is held in place.

A LANDSCAPE DESIGN ELEMENT & WASTE WATER SYSTEM...

Bamboo is an exquisite component of landscape design. For the human environment bamboo provides shade, wind break, acoustical barriers, and aesthetic beauty.
"The Bamboo Forest is an ecological wastewater utilization system that essentially grows away, waste, producing a marketable crop in the process. Comprised of a subsurface evaporation-transpiration bed planted with bamboo and other rapid-growing, the system is engineered to provide an aerobic rhizosphere (the home of living organisms in the root system), in which damaging polluting components are transformed into plant nutrients" Go to the Discover magazine article on Bamboo used to treat waste water!

Source:
www.pcarrd.dost.gov.ph/cin/bamboonet/faqs
www.bamboocentral.com
www.prima-klima-weltweit.de
epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html