Carbon Sequestration and Soil Carbon Build-Up under Eucalyptus Plantation in Semi-Arid Regions of North-West India

ABSTRACT

The current study investigated inter-annual growth, biomass production, carbon storage, and sequestration in Eucalyptus tereticornis plantation of different age (1–8 years) in North-west India. Nondestructive sampling using the allometric equation assessed aboveground and belowground biomass of E. tereticornis plantations. The growth, biomass accumulation, and CO₂ assimilation followed the log-normal distribution with age of the plantation. At early stages, E. tereticornis showed rapid growth and within six months 1.4-time increment in DBH and height of one-year tree. Total carbon stock in E. tereticornis increased from 18.7–20.6 Mg C ha⁻¹ in 1-year to 91.8–96.2 Mg C ha⁻¹ after 8-year of planting. The soil organic carbon in 0–15 cm depth showed 34.8% increment in 8 years of plantation cycle highlighting the significance of litter input. Terrestrial C sequestration in the matured plantation (8 years) varied from 85.3 to 88.7 Mg C ha⁻¹ during September 2012 and March 2013, respectively. Total carbon stock (plant+soil) in 8-year plantation ranges from 114.1 to 118.8 Mg C ha⁻¹. Results confirm that E. tereticornis based plantation forestry offers a low-cost strategy for carbon sequestration besides increasing farm income.

KEYWORDS:

• Biomass
• C sequestration
• Eucalyptus tereticornis
• growth
• soil organic C

Acknowledgments

We express our sincere gratitude to the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India for providing financial support to conduct this study. We convey our thanks to Mr. Ranjeet Raina for providing us research platform and logistics support for collection of soil samples. We thankfully acknowledge the help and support of Director and Head Soil and Crop Management, Central Soil Salinity Research Institute. The assistance of Mr. Girraj Prasad and Mr. Charan Singh in laboratory and fieldwork is also acknowledged.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dr. Parveen kumar [DST/IS-STAC/CO2-SR-58/09,Department of Science and Technology, India].