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On a cool day in October, before any leaves have turned color, three researchers are traveling deep into New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Leaving the paved roads behind, they pass by cranberry bogs and an Ocean Spray plant, and head into state land on a sandy pitted road. Deciduous trees fade away, and the road is soon lined with pitch pines decked with long tufted needles on irregular branches. Some of these pines have charred trunks, a testament to their fire retardant properties.

But this group, led by Rowan University professor Charles Schutte, and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection wetland ecologist Josh Moody, is on its way to one of the few Atlantic white cedar swamps left in the state.

Atlantic white cedars once thrived in New Jersey but have declined in recent years, leaving only about 20% of the original acreage and prompting the state’s Forest Service to launch the Atlantic White Cedar Restoration Project.

“It was really a hallmark species of the Pine Barrens,” Moody said. “It was used for building. It grows really tall, really straight and is really resistant to rot. So you can imagine that’s a really sought after wood for a lot of items. The soil that it sits on is dependent on that particular tree, it’s a very carbon rich soil.”

Charles Schutte, an assistant professor at Rowan University’s Department of Environmental Science, packs dirt along the edges of a well in an Atlantic white cedar swamp in the Wharton State Forest while Joshua Moody, a researcher at the NJDEP Division of Science and Research, waits to add bentonite. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)

These researchers want to know how much carbon locked into that soil escapes and compare that to how much the cedar trees absorb.

New Jersey has some ambitious climate goals. The state wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. One strategy focuses on how the state’s lands can be used to help absorb carbon emissions. But first, researchers need to learn the balance between how much greenhouse gas the state’s forests emit, and how much they absorb. The Atlantic white cedar forests are one of four types of wetland forests upon which this research project is focused. The others include two deciduous forests and another type of pine forest.

They’ve spent several years plotting out dozens of sites, narrowing it down to 12, and today is the first time they will start to install tools to measure the emissions in the Atlantic white cedar swamp.

Bushwhacking to the research site

Schutte and Moody pull their pickup truck over to the side of the road once they reach the Penn State Forest and quickly begin to unload their equipment – PVC piping, blue buckets and augurs, a hand tool used in drilling wells.
Charles Schutte, an assistant professor at Rowan University’s Department of Environmental Science, uses an auger to dig a well in an Atlantic white cedar swamp in the Wharton State Forest. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)

They want to know if the amount of carbon the swamp’s trees absorb through photosynthesis, and which ultimately gets buried in this soggy soil, is greater than, or less than the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that escape naturally. They are most interested in measuring methane – a potent greenhouse gas.

“In some of these wetlands where we’re working, it might be that there will be more methane emitted than carbon buried, so the ecosystem is having a warming effect on the atmosphere,” Schutte said. “But again, that’s natural. That ecosystem’s been here. It’s been doing that for a long time.”