Tea Gardens, A Potential Carbon-sink for Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

The necessity to identify ecosystems with high carbon sink capacity as an alternative mitigation approach to terrestrial carbon sequestration has increased due to hazards such as global warming from emissions of Green House Gases mainly due to anthropogenic activities. Tea is an intensively managed perennial cash crop planted beneath a canopy of shade trees. They provide a prospect for the reduction of climate change while providing economic incentives so much so that some states and the country are dependent on the plantations and the revenue generated out of the tea gardens. Tea and shade trees together can store a significant quantity of atmospheric CO2 in the plants and the soil .The area of the gardens and the shade trees that grow in them makes it very necessary to estimate the amount of carbon sequestered in tea agroforestry systems and define their role as carbon sinks countering the climatic changes and the mitigation of the same.