Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Gilchrist, Sandra

Area of Concentration

Agroecology

Abstract

The entirety of this thesis is rooted in the context of global climate change. The integration of food production systems with methods explicitly designed to mitigate climate change and sequester atmospheric carbon is an elegant solution to problems caused by global warming and increasing population. In this thesis I observe the carbon sequestration potential of a small agroforestry system and carbon farm that has been planted at the New College of Florida. Placed in southwest Florida with very close proximity to Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, the New College Food Forest and Carbon Farm has the potential to become a small scale model for carbon sequestration studies and agroecological restoration and enhancement. A series of carbon sequestration models (agroforestry, maricultural and other) are proposed, combined and analyzed to improve the understanding of how this small college can decrease its carbon bootprint. Through the lens of a geostatistical analysis of the organic carbon content of the food forest soils across three soil horizons compared to surrounding soils, a data set is established that will serve as a report of the area’s performance to date, and from which predictive models can be derived. Through intertwining the human and the global scales of carbon farming, and through observing the issue through the lenses of climate justice, agriculture and conservation, the New College Food Forest and Carbon Farm falls squarely in the arena of global climate change.

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