Carbon stock potential of Sekele Mariam forest in North Western Ethiopia: an implication for climate change mitigation
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Carbon stock potential of Sekele Mariam forest in North Western Ethiopia: an implication for climate change mitigation Gezahegn Gashu Ewunetie1 · Birhan Asmame Miheretu2 · Goitom Tesfaye Mareke2 Received: 4 June 2020 / Accepted: 3 November 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Forest plays a crucial role in climate change mitigation by sequestering and retaining carbon in above and below-ground biomass of trees, dead tree and deadwood biomass, litter biomass, and soil. Thus the study was conducted to estimate the carbon stock potential of the Sekele Mariam forest, North Western Ethiopia. The field data were collected through systematic random sampling techniques from the 20 m × 20 m area of 48 sample plots. The above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, dead tree, and deadwood biomass of the study area were collected from 20 m × 20 m area of the main plot, while the soil sample and litter biomass was collected from 1 m × 1 m area of subplots, which located at the four corners and one at the center of the main plot. The carbon stock of different carbon pools was estimated using different selective allometric and mathematical models and analyzed by statistical package for social science (SPSS) software version 21. The result showed that the mean carbon stock of each carbon pool such as above-ground carbon, below-ground carbon, dead tree, and deadwood carbon, litter carbon, and soil organic carbon accounted for about 362.72, 72.55, 3.43, 2.01, and 179.68 t/ha, respectively. The carbon stock variation along altitudinal gradients indicated altitude had no statistically significant effect on any of the carbon pools of the study area at α (0.05). The ultimate result showed that the study area stored and sequestered 620.39 t carbon per ha and 2776.83 t CO2 equivalents per ha, respectively. Keywords Biomass · Carbon stock · Sekele Mariam forest · Ethiopia
Introduction Forest carbon stock is debilitated by deforestation and forest degradation, which results in the release of CO2 to the environment (IPCC 2000). This increases the barometric convergence of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which is recorded as the main source of human-induced worldwide climate change (IPCC 2007a). Nowadays, various amount of carbon is delivered into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide because of clearing and corruption of forest assets (Roper 2001), which reached to 430 parts per million, making the world warm by more than 0.5 °C and will lead further warming later on (IPCC 2013). Climate change will proceed until; the outflow and concentration of GHGs are sustained and * Gezahegn Gashu Ewunetie [email protected] 1
Department of Natural Resource Management, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wollo University, Dessie, Ethiopia
2
balanced out (IPCC 2007b). This is the worldwide issue that large scale CO2 emission reductions are required with strict cutoff points on each country to balance out the emanation of such gases (Perschel et al. 2007). C
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