The Gemstone Project

In 2010, the CarbonSinks Team at the University of Maryland demonstrated the feasibility of wood burial as a carbon sequestration strategy. Conducted at the Wye Lab on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a 3 year experiment monitored the decomposition of 125 wood samples. The results showed that even under a non-ideal condition, the lifetime of buried wood can be extended from few years on the surface to several decades when buried. The project also developed the first methodology for wood burial. See the project report.