Mapping carbon emission at four mangrove sites of india as result of loss of vegetation cover for better climate adaptation strategy

Abstract

To combat climate change increase in carbon sink or forest cover is most important adaptation technique. India has committed to create additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030 in Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) submitted to Paris meet COP 21 (Conference Of Parties). A IPCC Tier II analysis of different mangrove sites of India will give a better snapshot of role of mangrove cover as carbon sinks to combat climate change and to achieve national target of carbon sink increase. Though individual detailed level study is done for different mangrove sites but a comparative carbon emission profiling for mangrove sites of India is not done. We quantify the deforestation of mangrove cover at two sites of India situated along east and west coast of India and calculate Tier II estimation of carbon emission due to deforestation of above ground biomass alone for a time period of 2001 to 2016. In this study, mangrove sites in Sundarbans and Gujarat are mapped using Landsat imagery employing supervised classification techniques. Deforested area is mapped from rich Landsat data. Carbon emission at different mangrove sites is then estimated for each year in between 2000 to 2016 using Landsat data. We find that mangroves in Sundarbans along the east coast of India undergo comparatively higher deforestation owing to different natural and anthropogenic threats than the mangroves in Gujarat which shows very little deforestation. As the carbon emission value of above ground biomass of Sundarbans is higher than that of Gujarat, a higher carbon emission profile is observed for Sundarbans site. Therefore the deforestation rate and yearly carbon emission due to loss of above-ground-biomass alone is higher in Sundarbans site than Gujarat site. This deforestation and carbon emission profile due to loss of mangrove cover will give policymakers a primary analysis to pick up appropriate adaptation strategy to adhere to INDC proposal and combat climate change.