Carbon Sequestration in the Soils under Different Land uses in Yamunanagar District of Haryana

Abstract

Soil Organic Carbon has been ignored since long because it was treated as a dead biomass. After the awareness of climate change, its importance has been recognized worldwide. Therefore, this study was conducted in four land uses viz. Forests, Plantations, Horticulture and Agroforestry in Yamunanagar district of Haryana. Over all, fifty nine numbers of sampling sites (Four hundred and fourteen soil samples) were selected in all land uses from the district. Variation in the number of samples was due to difference in area available under particular land uses. In Yamunanagar district, maximum SOC pool was under Forests (51.05 t ha-1) followed by Plantations (35.32 t ha-1), Horticulture (33.58 t ha-1) and the least was under Agroforestry (29.22 t ha-1). SOC pool under Forests was 44.54 %, 52.03% and 74.71% higher as compared to Plantations, Horticulture and Agroforestry land uses respectively. SOC pool under Plantations was marginally higher as compared to Horticulture (5.18 %) while it was 20.88 % higher in comparison to Agroforestry. Organic carbon pool in the soils under Horticulture land use was 14.92 % higher as compared to soils under Agroforestry land use. When SOC pool under different land uses were tested by one - way ANOVA, it was found that SOC pool under all land uses were significantly different. SOC pool under Forests was statistically significantly different with the SOC pool under Plantation, Agroforestry and Horticulture. Results of one - way ANOVA indicates that SOC pool between the different plantations was significantly different at 0.05 level.