Example loaded: 1,000 trees in a temperate oceanic restoration project.
Save up to three calculated setups to compare planting schedules, forest types, or risk assumptions.
No scenarios saved yet.
The calculator treats every planting year as a separate cohort. Gross above-ground removal follows an establishment-plus-ramp curve; mortality then changes annually with cohort age. Baseline/additionality, leakage, and permanence are sequential planning deductions, shown separately from gross biological removal. These percentages are user assumptions, not a substitute for a project methodology.
For cohort c in project year y, age is a = y − start(c) + 1. Units are hectares, trees, years, and tonnes of CO₂.
The growth multiplier is 0 during establishment, rises linearly from 0 to 1 during the ramp, and remains 1 afterward. Deductions are applied in the displayed order. Gross removal is the biological planning estimate before mortality and project-risk deductions; net is a conservative planning result, not credited CO₂.
The live example will appear after calculation.
IPCC Tier 1 above-ground growth values imply broad full-stock rates of roughly 0.7–1.7 tCO₂/ha/yr for boreal systems, 5.2–7.6 for temperate systems, and 8.6–25.8 for moist tropical systems after converting dry biomass to CO₂. They are screening ranges, not site forecasts.
Density varies with restoration objective, species, natural regeneration, and thinning. Enter a forester’s stocking prescription; if only spacing is known, the calculator converts square spacing to trees per hectare.
Competition, herbivory, site preparation, rainfall, stock quality, planting technique, fire, pests, and maintenance can all change survival. Monitor cohorts rather than assuming one permanent percentage.
Record planted area, stocking, species, planting date, permanent plot locations, live/dead status, diameter, height, disturbance, replacements, and land-use displacement. Re-measure consistently.
Use a professional forest-carbon team when making finance, credit, compliance, land-rights, or public impact claims, or when soil and other carbon pools materially affect the result.
| Responsible organization | Starlight Robotics / Starlight Tools. No independent scientific review is claimed. |
|---|---|
| Calculation version | 2.0.0 · Last reviewed 17 July 2026 |
| Reported quantity | Tonnes of CO₂ (not carbon and not multi-gas CO₂e). |
| Included carbon pool | Simplified above-ground woody biomass growth only. |
| Excluded | Soil, below-ground biomass, litter, dead wood, harvested products, project emissions, and any avoided emissions. |
| Intended use | Early planning, education, and scenario comparison. Results are not certified offsets or issued carbon credits. |
There is no universal trees-per-tonne value. In this calculator it equals 1,000 kg divided by the selected per-tree annual rate and the applicable growth, mortality, baseline, leakage, and permanence factors. Young trees require more time, so use the project timeline rather than a one-year mature-tree shortcut.
Land required equals the number of planted trees divided by planting density. The calculator converts acres to hectares and can derive density from square tree spacing. Actual stocking should follow local silvicultural and ecological guidance.
Growth depends on climate, moisture, soils, species, stand density, disturbance, and management. The presets are broad IPCC Tier 1 planning defaults, not species forecasts; local inventory or yield-table data should override them.
The model assigns near-zero removal during establishment, then increases annual removal linearly to the selected full-stock rate. It is a transparent approximation; real stand growth curves are not linear and may decline at older ages.
Each planting cohort loses a selected percentage of surviving trees annually. The calculator uses one annual mortality rate for years 1–5 and another from year 6 onward, so survival changes with cohort age rather than being deducted once at planting.
No. Results include a simplified above-ground woody biomass growth pool only. Soil, litter, dead wood, below-ground biomass, harvested wood products, and project emissions are excluded because they require pool-specific field data and methodology rules.
Carbon is the element stored in biomass; CO₂ is the atmospheric gas reported here. Carbon mass is converted to CO₂ mass by multiplying by 44/12. The calculator reports tonnes of CO₂, not tonnes of carbon or broad CO₂-equivalent.
No. These planning estimates are not certified offsets or issued credits. Crediting requires an approved methodology, project boundary, baseline and additionality demonstration, leakage assessment, monitoring, verification, and a program-specific non-permanence treatment.
