Abstract:
Forests play a significant role in sequestering greenhouse gases and reducing climate change.
However, forest resource degradation is increasing from time to time. Hence it is important
to investigate the biomass carbon stock and analyze the forest cover dynamics because there
is a carbon trade business in which the countries charged based on the stored greenhouse
gasses that could serve as a financial source to run a sustainable community-based forest
management system. This study was conducted to investigate carbon stock and land use land
cover dynamics of the Alemsaga forest and its surrounding area in north-western Ethiopia. A
transect survey method was used to sample the carbon stock. The sampling point has a
distance of 500m from each other resulting in a total of 34 points for forest biomass and 10
sample points were selected randomly for the forest SOC sample. Also, five sample points
for each land use type (grazing land and cultivated land) were allocated randomly for the
SOC sample. The circular sample quadrant was used to collect biomass sample, the radius of
0.56m was used for herb, litter, and soil sample, while 6.4m radius of the circular plot was
for measuring trees with D.B.H. <15cm. Whereas 10m radius of the circular plots were used
for measuring tree with D.B.H >15cm. The land use/cover classification and change analysis
was conducted using a free 30m*30m pixel size/spatial resolution of the Landsat image
(ETM+). To quantify the trend of land-use/cover composite Landsat satellite images for the
year (2000, 2010, and 2018) were used and analyzed using ArcGIS version 10 software. The
result shows that there were 60 types of species and 2209 individuals of the tree were
recorded in 34 sample plots. The tree species distribution in Alemsaga forest was dominated
by some shrub species such as Carissa edulis (12.79%), Dodonaea Angustifolia (9.96%),
Premna schimperi (5.30%), Achanthus sennii (4.17%) Grewia ferruginea (3.77%) Clausena
anisata (3.32%) and Clutia abyssinica (3.10%) Based on the plant height class categories the
majority of the samples were found in the lower height class 1 (<5m) and class 2 (5-10m),
similarly, the lower DBH and height class consists of the majority of (90.18%) tree
individuals, also the lower biomass carbon stock as well. The higher biomass carbon stock
was recorded in higher DBH and height class but less in tree density. The mean AGB carbon
stock of the forest land-use system was 64.95±24.86 t/ha while the mean soil organic carbon
stock of the forest was 64.1±2.4 t/ha in 30cm soil depth. The SOC stock analysis among the
three land-use systems within the soil depth of 0–10cm, 10-20cm, and 20-30cm shows a
significant difference between the land use system and soil depth. The soil depth of 0–10cm,
10-20cm, and 20-30cm have (92.87±4. 62.57±9.47, 36.87±8.21 t/ha) in forest land, while the
grazing land mean SOC stock was (57.88±7.02, 45.89±5.16, 35.24±4.03 t/ha), and the
cultivated land mean SOC was (41.46±3.25, 32.52±4.32, 28.76±4.2t/ha) respectively.
Alemsaga forests cover has been increased in the last couple of decades, the forests covered
including the spares and the dense forest was 664.15hectare of land before 18 years ago in
2000, but currently, both land class covers 811.56 ha in 2018. The improvement of forest
land status was directly related to the government and stakeholder involvement in forest
management intervention. Whereas, the bush land class in 2000 was 194.43 ha and further
reduced to 137.86ha (9.20%) in 2018 because the community expands their farm by
converting the grazing land into cultivated land. The government should give more emphasis
on forest protection and consider carbon trade and planting a tree species which has higher
carbon sequestration capacity.
Keyword: Biomass carbon stock; SOC stock; LULC change