Carbon Sequestration through Soil Organic Carbon: Estimation of SOC Pool under Different Land uses in Rudrapryag district of Uttarakhand State

Abstract

Soil Organic Carbon has been ignored since long because it was treated as a dead biomass but after the awareness related to climate change its importance has been recognized. A study was conducted to estimate the SOC pool under different land uses in Rudrapryag district of Uttarakhand. Study was conducted in three available land uses viz. Forests, Grassland and Horticulture in Rudrapryag district. Under forests land use, Soil Organic Carbon pool was estimated in all available forest covers i.e. Silver fir and Spruce (Abies pindrow and Picea smithiana) Quercus (Quercus leucotrichophora), Chir (Pinus roxburghii) and Miscellaneous forests. Under horticulture land use SOC was estimated in Mango and Guava orchards. Soils collected from different forests covers in Augustmuni, Rudrapryag, Mayali, and Khangra forest ranges of Rudrapryag Forest Division indicate maximum SOC pool in the soils under Silver fir and Spruce forest (192.32 t ha-1) followed by Quercus (77.42 t ha-1), Miscellaneous (47.43 t ha-1) and the least was Chir (37.70 t ha-1). Rudrapryag districts have 96,76,597.91 tones (9.67 million tons) SOC store in the forests soils and 0.15 m t under horticulture soils. In the soils under Mango orchards, higher SOC pool (57.66 t ha-1) was worked out while under Guava orchards it was only 34.28 t ha-1. Grasslands in the districts have fairly good amount of SOC pool i.e. 138.22 t ha-1. It was statistically tested and found that differences in SOC pool under forests were statistically significantly different with grassland. SOC pools under Grassland and Horticulture was also significantly different.