Soil Organic Carbon Pool under Different Land Uses in Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand

Abstract

A study was conducted to estimate the soil organic carbon pool in different land uses in Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand. Soil samples were collected from three land uses viz. Forests, Plantations and Horticulture up to 30 cm depth. Under forests land use, soil organic carbon (SOC) pool was estimated in Sal (Shorea robusta), Deodar (Cedrus deodara), Quercus (Quercus leucotrichophora), Chir (Pinus roxburghii) and Miscellaneous forests. Under horticulture land use SOC was estimated in Apple, Guava, Mango and Litchi orchards and under plantation land use SOC was estimated in block plantations of Eucalyptus and Teak. Maximum SOC pool was observed in the soils under Deodar up to 30 cm depth (94.07 t ha-1) followed by Quercus (78.09 t ha1), Sal (56.60 t ha-1), Chir (49.80 t ha-1) and the least was under Miscellaneous (49.20 t ha-1). SOC pool under Deodar was significantly different from the SOC pool under Quercus, Sal, Chir pine and Miscellaneous and SOC pool under Quercus was also significantly different from Sal, Chir and Miscellaneous species. SOC pool under Sal, Chir pine and Miscellaneous did not differ significantly from each other. SOC pool in the soil under Teak plantation was 55.65 t ha-1 and under Eucalyptus it was 41.77 t ha-1. Apple orchards have maximum SOC pool i.e. 33.80 t ha-1 while all other orchards viz. Mango, Guava and Litchi have not much variation in the amount of SOC pool and have 23.60, 21.62 and 20.98 t ha-1 respectively. Major increase was observed in SOC pool under forests (236.44 %) as compared to plantation and 88.39 % as compared to horticulture land use.