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Soil organic carbon and carbon stock in community forests with varying altitude and slope aspect in Meghalaya, India

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Author Affiliations

  • 1Department of Environmental Studies, North Eastern Hill University, Meghalaya, India
  • 2Department of Environmental Studies, North Eastern Hill University, Meghalaya, India

Int. Res. J. Environment Sci., Volume 7, Issue (7), Pages 1-6, July,22 (2018)

Abstract

The contribution of forest ecosystems to the global climate change mitigation by storing carbon in the soil and their vegetation in nature is significant. Soil contain three times more carbon than that stored in the vegetation of an area. Altitude is one of the important factors influencing various parameters of the soil including carbon stock. Present study was conducted to understand variation in the soil carbon and carbon stock with respect to altitude and aspect in community forests of three agro ecological regions of Khasi Hills, Meghalaya. The study concluded that, Central upland region with highest elevation has highest level of carbon stock (47.27±2.12t/ha), followed by the Northern undulating region (28.09 ±1.25t/ha) and lowest in the South Precipitous low elevation region (24.24±.60t/ha). The result leads to the conclusion that the areas with higher altitude has higher carbon stock as compared to lower elevation areas which may be attributed to decreasing temperature with increasing altitude which inhibits the decay rate of soil organic matter which in turn induces higher carbon content in the soil. The study also record a strong positively relationship between altitude and other soil parameters like soil organic carbon, nitrogen and carbon stock. However it is negatively correlated with soil bulk density.

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