Assessment of Carbon Sequestration and Sink Potential: A Surrogate for Ecosystem Carrying Capacity in Dolvi Region, India

Abstract

The socio-economic development activities are aimed to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants along with industrial growth of the region. The development activity proposing expansion or new construction is anticipated to affect environment and hence any ecosystem existing in the vicinity of development activity needs to be assessed. In this study, an attempt has been made to assess the changes in existing ecosystem services due to expansion of industry and construction activities in the Dolvi region. For assessing the carrying capacity of region in such scenario indicators like NDVI, NDWI, Vegetation NDWI and forest ecosystem services such as carbon stock are estimated using geospatial techniques. To account for the possibility and effect of development on forest ecosystem, remote sensing and field analysis was carried out to estimate the status of indicators along with carbon sequestration and sink potential for the region. The NDVI value of 0.87 show healthy vegetation existing in the region. The NDWI has indicated the presence of water indicating region is not under water stress. From the current biomass estimation, the study region shows presence of forest which has biomass as high as 8 Mg/ha at terrestrial vegetation and 5 Mg/ha at mangrove vegetation. This biomass is a result of carbon sequestered in the region as 84.7 Mg/ha. The study confirmed that region has high Carbon stock with sink potential to absorb emissions from the development activities including construction and expansion of the industry in the region.q