Chapter 11 - Above-ground biomass and carbon content in select bamboo species across humid and semiarid zones of Karnataka, India

Abstract

Over the years, climate change has gained an increased significance in the international agenda. One of the prime concerns is an increasing need to enhance carbon sinks to reduce carbon load in the atmosphere. Both India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and the recent Paris Summit place great emphasis on sequestration of carbon. This paper examines the potential of bamboos for carbon sequestration by analyzing different growth parameters of five different bamboo species (Bambusa balcooa, Bambusa bambos, Dendrocalamus asper, Dendrocalamus stocksii, and Dendrocalamus strictus) in contrasting agroclimatic zones of tropical humids (Koppa) and semiarid (Hoskote) regions of Karnataka, India. The study evaluated above-ground biomass (AGB) and carbon content in these bamboo species through destructive sampling across the humid and semiarid zones. Two species namely B. bambos and D. strictus fared marginally better in the semiarid zones when compared to tropical humid zone, while the remaining three performed better in the tropical humid conditions. D. asper showed a distinct difference in growth across the two zones. The AGB was less than a quarter in the semiarid zones (41.09 Mg/ha) as compared to tropical humid (216.19 Mg/ha). Carbon content estimated from the subsamples collected post-AGB estimation of all bamboo species ranged between 40% and 45%. Several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change studies have pointed out that developing countries like India are more vulnerable to changing climate and have emphasized the need to initiate preemptive measures to mitigate probable damages. Considering that bamboo has been included recently as a prospective fast-growing species for carbon sequestration, this study highlights the potential contribution of bamboo in mitigating climate change from a local perspective to explore this possibility on a global scale.