Abstract
The present study estimates carbon stocks (C-stocks) of the Oak scrub forest of Sheringal valley through field inventory. Stem density (haǃ), tree height (m), basal area (m2·haǃ), stem volume (m2·haǃ), stem biomass (t·haǃ), total biomass (t·haǃ), and total C-stock (t·haǃ), were calculated. Stem density varied between 80±8.16 to 510 ± 42 trees haǃ, with a mean value of 226 ± 7 tress haǃ. The average tree height, basal area and stem volume were 5.47 ± 0.76 m, 12.82 ± 0.25 m2·haǃ and 46.37 ± 0.85 m3·haǃ respectively. The total calculated stem biomass was 32.46 ± 0.60 t·haǃ and total tree biomass was 51.61 ± 0.60 t·haǃ. The calculated C-stocks in the Oak scrub forest ranged from 2.005 ± 1.32 t·haǃ to 63.1 ± 3.34 t·haǃ and the mean C stocks was 25.80 ± 0.47 t·haǃ. The results of the study confirmed that the Oak scrub forest acts as a valuable sink of carbon, but this valuable storage factory of carbon faced the problems of excess uses for fuel wood, forage, domestic uses (mostly for construction) and unscientific management. Proper scientific management and proper utilization of the forest can be significant measures to enhance the potential of the forest to stored and sink more carbon and can be included for CDM and REED++ under Keyto protocol.
Highlights
Various human activities like land use change, fossil fuels burning, and deforestation increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause the problem of climate change and global warming
The present study provides detail information and field protocol regarding growing stock, biomass and carbon stock assessment in the Oak scrub forest
The present study was aimed to find out the growing stock, biomass and carbon stock in the Oak scrub forest of Sheringal valley
Summary
Various human activities like land use change, fossil fuels burning, and deforestation increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause the problem of climate change and global warming. Among terrestrial ecosystem forest ecosystem has the significant potential to store and sink carbon and globally forest are consider a potential tools to mitigate global climate change (Nabuurs et al, 2007; Sharma et al, 2010). The total estimated growing stock of the world forest is 527 billion m3, while the total stored carbon in world forest is 650 billion tons (FAO, 2010). In Pakistan the forest department conducts inventory on regular basis for the measurement of the growing stock in the shape of working plan and can be used to assessed carbon stock, but these estimates can be error prone (Nizami, 2010; Raqeeb et al, 2014)
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