Assessment of Carbon Stock and its Relationship with Species Richness and Disturbance in Community Forests of Kayarkhola Watershed, Central Nepal

Abstract

Forests play an important role in absorbing the atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, the carbon sequestration potential of a forest is affected by several natural and anthropogenic factor. The aim of this research is to assess and quantify the forest carbon stock and study the effect of species richness, strata, invasive species, grazing, fodder collection, and slope in community forest of Kayarkhola watershed, Central Nepal. A total of 50 circular sampling plots throughout six community forests were taken to quantify tree and sapling biomass. Forest carbon stock was calculated in three major pools- above and below ground tree biomass and above ground sapling biomass in accordance with dense and sparse strata. The total carbon stock stored in dense and sparse forest strata was estimated to be 177.18 tons/ha and 128.175 tons/ha respectively. This study shows that the individual effect of the disturbance factors such as grazing, fodder collection, presence of invasive species and strata doesn’t have significant impact on the tree biomass. However, the combined effect can be significant. The combined effect of species richness, grazing and slope was observed to have greater effect on the tree’s biomass of community forest in central Nepal.