Abstract
Tropical forests are rich in biodiversity with great potential for carbon (C) storage. We estimated ecosystem-level C stock using data from 70 forest plots in three major forest types: tropical dry deciduous (TDD I and TDD II), tropical semi-evergreen (TSE I and TSE II) and tropical evergreen forests (TEF I, TEF II and TEF III) of Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats, India. The average C stock in these forests was 336.8 Mg C/ha, of which 231.3, 3.0, 2.4, 15.2 and 84.9 Mg C/ha were stored in woody vegetation, understorey, litter, deadwood and soil respectively. The live vegetation, detritus and soil contributed 65.5%, 5.5% and 29% respectively to the total ecosystem-level C stock and distributed in forest types in the order: TEF III > TEF II > TEF I > TSE I > TDD II > TSE II > TDD I. The plant diversity, structural attributes and environmental factors showed significant positive correlations with C stocks and accounted for 6.7, 77.2 and 16% of variance. These findings indicate that the tropical forests in the Western Ghats store large amount of C, and resulting data are invaluable for planning and monitoring forest conservation and management programs to enhance C storage in tropical forests.
Highlights
The increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, currently at 416 ppm[1] remains as a major contributor to global warming and storage of carbon (C) in different pools of forest ecosystems plays a crucial role in combating global warming and mitigating adverse effects of climate change
Assessment of C stocks in relation with tree species richness is essential for the effective management of tropical forests in a manner that would result in C emission reductions as well as biodiversity conservation as recognized by the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme, and understanding the relationship between species richness and C stocks is important for effective implementation of REDD+ policies
This study revealed that the evergreen forest type which had the highest tree species richness, basal area and highest number of big-sized trees had the highest C stocks as compared to the dry deciduous and semi-evergreen forest types with low species richness, basal area and low number of big-sized trees
Summary
The increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, currently at 416 ppm[1] remains as a major contributor to global warming and storage of carbon (C) in different pools of forest ecosystems plays a crucial role in combating global warming and mitigating adverse effects of climate change. A great variation exists among the biomass and C stock estimates for different types of tropical forests (170.3–689.7 Mg/ha)[12] These wide differences in C stock estimates may be due to variations in tree species richness, stand structural attributes, climatic differences, forest type, altitudinal variations and soil types[13,14,15]. Most previous studies focused only on the aboveground biomass C (AGBC) stocks in tree species, without accounting for the roles played by C stocks of understorey (shrubs and herbs), roots, deadwood, litter, soil and small diameter {≥ 3 cm to < 10 cm DBH (diameter at breast height)} tree individuals in tropical forest ecosystems and their relationships with diversity, structural attributes and environmental factors. Structural attributes and environmental conditions have been reported to be strongly associated with C s tocks[8,26,27,28,29,30,31]
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