Potential CO 2 Emission Due to Loss of Above Ground Biomass from the Indian Sundarban Mangroves During the Last Four Dec
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Potential CO2 Emission Due to Loss of Above Ground Biomass from the Indian Sundarban Mangroves During the Last Four Decades Anirban Akhand 1 & Anirban Mukhopadhyay 1 & Abhra Chanda 1 & Sandip Mukherjee 2 & Abhishek Das 3 & Sourav Das 1 & Sugata Hazra 1 & Debasis Mitra 2 & S. B. Choudhury 4 & K. H. Rao 4
Received: 23 November 2015 / Accepted: 15 February 2016 # Indian Society of Remote Sensing 2016
Abstract Sundarban, the largest single patch of mangrove forest of the world is shared by Bangladesh (~ 60 %) and India (~ 40 %). Loss of mangrove biomass and subsequent potential emission of carbon dioxide is reported from different parts of the world. We estimated the loss of above ground mangrove biomass and subsequent potential emission of carbon dioxide in the Indian part of the Sundarban during the last four decades. The loss of mangrove area has been estimated with the help of remotely sensed data and potential emission of carbon dioxide has been evaluated with the help of published above ground biomass data of Indian Sundarban. Total loss of mangrove area was found to be 107 km2 between the year 1975 and 2013. Amongst the total loss ~60 % was washed away in the water by erosion, ~ 23 % was converted into barren lands and the rest were anthropogenically transformed into other landforms. The potential carbon dioxide emission due to the degradation of above ground biomass was estimated to be 1567.98 ± 551.69 Gg during this period, which may account to 64.29 million $ in terms of the social
* Anirban Akhand [email protected]
1
School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, 188 Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Kolkata, West Bengal 700032, India
2
Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, ISRO, Department of Space, Government of India, 4, Kalidas Road, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248001, India
3
Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, 188 Raja S. C. Mullick Road, Kolkata, West Bengal 700032, India
4
National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Department of Space, Government of India, Balanagar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh 500 625, India
cost of carbon. About three-forth of the total mangrove loss was found in the peripheral islands which are much more prone to erosion. Climate induced changes and anthropogenic land use change could be the major driving force behind this loss of ‘blue carbon’. Keywords Mangroves . Sundarban . Remote sensing . Above ground biomass . Potential carbon dioxide emission . Social cost of carbon
Introduction The coastal stocks of carbon are now-a-days referred to as ‘blue carbon’. Typical ‘blue carbon’ repositories include mangroves, sea grasses and salt marshes ecosystem (Fisher and Huo 2012). Mangroves are very specialized type of ecosystem, which covers almost 15.2 million ha (FAO 2007) encompassing the estuarine ecosystems of tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Mangrove ecosystem is considered as one of the most productive ecosystems. On an areal basis, mangroves are more productive than salt marshes, seagrasses, macroalgae, coral reef algae, microphytobenthos an
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