Aboveground biomass estimation and carbon stock assessment along a topographical gradient in the forests of Manipur, Nor
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Aboveground biomass estimation and carbon stock assessment along a topographical gradient in the forests of Manipur, Northeast India Kiran Sharma 1 & Anup Saikia 1
&
Santonu Goswami 2 & Monjit Borthakur 3
Received: 14 November 2019 / Accepted: 30 April 2020 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020
Abstract Forests act as a source and sink of carbon. Forest biomass has been extensively used for environmental modelling and carbon stock estimation. In recent decades, significant land use changes occurred in the Manipur valley, India, impacting biomass production and carbon sequestration potentials. To assess the trajectories of these changes and their impact on biomass, this study examined the effect of land use changes and altitude on aboveground biomass (AGB). Satellite data along with tree sampling were used to assess AGB and carbon stock. Between 1989 and 2016, forest area decreased by 68,245 ha and dense forest (DF) proportion declined from 19.3 to 5.2% with a total loss of 111,387 ha. Stand density declined from 498 to 178 trees ha1. The maximum AGB stock (27.6 Mt) which lay in DF in 1989 declined by 74% in 2016. Lowland forests fared more poorly with an average AGB of 144.2 Mg ha−1 DF and 46.5 Mg ha−1 in open forests (OF). In highland forests, these varied from 212.6 Mg ha−1 in DF to 52.5 Mg ha−1 in OF. The maximum carbon stored occurred in 40–60 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) in highland DF and > 80 cm dbh in lowland DF. A positive correlation (R2 = 0.544) existed between AGB and elevation. A nonlinear relationship between AGB and elevation using the quadratic regression model, AGB = 11.5–0.03 × elevation + 0.0002 × elevation2 was found to be best fit. Higher elevation inhibited the exploitation of forest resources and enhanced carbon sequestration potentials in Manipur’s forests. Keywords Aboveground biomass . Carbon stock . Stand density . Topographical gradient . Sub-tropical forest . Remote sensing
Introduction Forests play a significant role in food security (Arnold et al. 2011; Ferraro and Hanauer 2011) and contribute to rural livelihoods especially mountain dwellers (Smith Olsen and Overgaard Larsen 2003; Prasad 2003; Youn 2009), absorbing and storing carbon (Houghton 2007; Pan et al. 2011; Sullivan et al. 2017) while providing other environmental services (Pawson et al. 2013; Verheyen et al. 2016). They are a vital Responsible Editor: Biswajeet Pradhan * Anup Saikia [email protected] 1
Dept of Geography, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India
2
National Remote Sensing Centre, Dept. of Space, Government of India, Hyderabad, India
3
Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Science Change and Development, Guwahati, India
component in the context of carbon cycle and climate change because forests act as source and sink of carbon through deforestation and regrowth of forest (Haripriya 2002; Luyssaert et al. 2008; Baccini et al. 2017; Sullivan et al. 2017; Dang et al. 2019). Regrettably, extensive anthropogenic disturbances led to the degradation of natural forest resulting in secondary forest
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