Years of UVA research is being hindered by the removal of pink flags on trees – WHSV

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) Someone is disrupting years of research and delaying costly time for several projects at the University of Virginia. The question of who is responsible remains a mystery leaving students and faculty with plenty of questions.

The person has been removing pink flags on trees that mark the plots for student research.

Hopefully its a well wishing person thinking they dont like clutter in the forest or maybe somebody that thinks its some kind of project to cut trees down and they want to stop it. We dont know, UVA Environmental Science Professor Hank Shugart said.

The pink flags are there to indicate research plots for a couple of projects.

"Trying to understand runoff and what runoff does to the vegetation. So, we're doing labs and also using sorts of focused research on how water processes and land processes work," Shugart says.

The university is also keeping track of carbon

Were keeping track of tree growth and how much carbon is being stored by O-Hill, which has to do with global change, Shugart says.

Students are also left guessing where to put flags again to continue their research.

We kind of cobbled together where our old plots were with our memories of, 'oh yeah, that tree was in this plot, I think,' UVA PHD Student Elise Heffernan said.

The research could lead to more than a million dollars for the university.

Right now, theres a market for carbon and O-Hill in 70 years could probably store away somewhere between $800,000 to $1.5 million worth of carbon, Shugart said.

That money would come from simply growing trees and then selling the stored carbon that results from not cutting the trees down.

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Years of UVA research is being hindered by the removal of pink flags on trees - WHSV