Comparison of carbon stock in agroforestry systems between two ecological regions of Nepal

• Main Authors: Narayan Prasad Pokhrel, Hari Prasad Pandey, Kamal Acharya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences 2020-12-01
• Series: Computational Ecology and Software
• Subjects: biomass; home garden; mid-hills; soil organic carbon; terai
• Online Access: http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/ces/articles/2020-10(4)/comparison-of-carbon-stock-in-agroforestry-systems.pdf

Nepal is an agrarian economy-based country where more than 70% of people are still living in the countryside and exercising various types of agroforestry system for a long time. Carbon sequestration through agroforestry system is an emerging strategy to cope with the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change. Having widespread agroforestry systems, the reporting on carbon conservation in this system is very limited. In this context, the study aimed to analyze the carbon stock in the agroforestry system and compare in two different ecological regions of Province 5, Nepal. Home gardens were taken as a reference for the study from Terai (Kapilbastu district) and Mid-hills (Arghakhanchi district) regions. The data were collected in 50 Mid-hills and 30 Terai households through simple random sampling. The appropriate analysis and statistical tests were employed. The result found that the average total biomass was significantly greater (p<0.05) in Terai (21.314 t ha-1) than in Mid-hills (11.203 t ha-1)).The soil organic carbon (SOC) was found 61.17 t ha-1 in Terai and 67.608 t ha-1 in Mid-hills, and bulk density found 1.38 g cm-3 in Terai and 1.076 g cm-3 in Mid-hills region. However, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) found in the total carbon stock (biomass and soil) between two ecological regions, indicating that similar amount of carbon is conserving irrespective of ecological regions in the home garden of Province 5, Nepal. However, results suggest that home garden would be a significant viable source of the carbon sink in the terrestrial ecosystem. The results would give insights for multi-purpose agroforestry system management including carbon conservation without jeopardizing food security (agriculture production system) under the same land resources.