Assessment of carbon sequestration in soils of different land use land cover in Honnaver Taluka of Uttara Kannada district

Abstract

The study was conducted in Honnaver taluka (14° 8′ 0″ N to 14° 25′ N Latitude and 74° 25′ E to 74° 45′ E Longitude) of Uttar Kannada district, Karnataka India to assess the carbon sequestration in soils of different land use systems. The IRS P6 LISS-III imageries of the study area was procured from NRSC, Hyderabad and different land use systems in Honnaver taluka were identified with the ground truth data collected from GPS and processed in ERDAS software. The land use land cover (LULC) classes, viz., dense forest, sparse forest, agriculture and open land were identified. The total area in each class was assessed through supervise classification. The soil samples at 1 m depth were drawn at grid point in flat land and along the profile in sloppy land in different land use system. The SOC was estimated using Walkley and Black rapid titration method. The total area in four land use classes is 68520 ha with SOC pool of 12.112 million tonnes. Among different classes dense forest covers highest area (44053 ha) and highest SOC pool (8.82 million tonnes). Among the different land use classes, higher SOC was sequestered in dense forest (200.10 t/ha) followed by sparse forest (166.89 t/ha). The SOC in open land and agriculture land is 145.78 and 82.79 t/ha, respectively. The carbon mitigation potential of dense forest is 2.42 times higher compared to agricultural land followed by sparse forest (2.02 times).