Estimation of Atmospheric Carbon Mitigation through Urban Landscaping in Arid Areas Using Native Species

Carbon capturing and sequestration are of great interest to reduce the carbon dioxide CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere. To achieve this, forests, grasslands, and vegetation areas, in general, should be planted and conserved. However, for cultivating a landscape, water resources become an issue for some regions specifically in the arid areas where they have water scarcity and use desalination of seawater for life amenities. Even with using relatively clean energy source (natural gas), desalination is responsible for 12 kg of CO₂ eq m-3 with high consumption of electricity and energy resources. Alternating this with treated wastewater with good purity can help reuse of treated sewage effluent TSE, abate the consumption of resources, and mitigate the emissions of CO₂. This scenario was applied in the middle east region, particularly in Qatar where the 2022 World Cup event will be held. An intensive project was established near Doha north TSE with the potential of reducing the massive amount of CO₂ by natural sequestration through planting trees and grasslands. Efficiently, TSE exclusively was used to cover the need of the whole landscape. In this study, the focus was on studying the potential mitigation of carbon by measuring the operational carbon footprint from facilitating and planting the landscape, the carbon captured by the whole landscape (trees, grassland, soil, etc.), and the net carbon storage and neutralization. Initial results showed that the usage of TSE was able to reduce the CO₂ by approximately 12 times compared to desalinated water. With further investigation, the value of carbon sequestration through the landscape can provide positive net carbon storage helping in neutralizing carbon emissions with sustainable and natural facilities.