Assessment of biomass carbon stock in an Ailanthus excelsa Roxb. plantation Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

The article presents biomass carbon stock for an Ailanthus excelsa plantation in Dehradun Forest Division, Uttarakhand, India. Destructive sampling was used to calc. the biomass of A. excelsa and undergrowth vegetation (shrubs and herbs); volumetric equations were used for estg. the biomass of assocd. tree species. The total biomass of A. excelsa was calcd. as 126.07 t ha-1 with above ground biomass (AGB) 102.96 t ha-1 and below ground biomass (BGB) 23.11 t ha-1. The total biomass of the two assocd. tree species was estd. as 43.91 t ha-1 (AGB 34.01 and BGB 9.9 t ha-1). The total biomass of shrub and herb species was calcd. as 1.62 and 0.98 t ha-1, resp. Litter biomass was calcd. as 0.98 t ha-1. The estd. total biomass of the whole ecosystem (173.56 t ha-1) was obtained as the sum of these component biomass values. Carbon content of the main tree species, assocd. tree species, and understory vegetation (shrubs+herbs), was estd. in AGB pool (63.76 Mg ha-1) and BGB pool (14.84 Mg ha-1), and added to the litter carbon (0.35 Mg ha-1) and soil org. carbon (SOC) (46.27 Mg ha-1) to est. the carbon stock in the whole ecosystem (125.22 Mg ha-1). The SOC to AGB ratio was 0.72. [on SciFinder(R)]