Soil Carbon Sequestration Capacity in Different Land Uses (Case Study: Award Watershed in Mazandaran Province)

One approach for reducing CO2 and increasing global carbon storage is carbon sequestration in soils. Watersheds are important biophysical and topographic units representing diverse ecosystems. This study aims to evaluate carbon sequestration in different land uses and its economic aspect in the Award watershed in Mazandaran Province. First, the boundary of the watershed was delineated and controlled by a field survey using GPS. Then, soil samples were selected randomly, taken from a depth of 0-30 cm for each land use (i.e., protected forest, open forest, rangelands, walnut gardens, mixed walnut–apple gardens, cereal croplands and frijol farmland). In total, 21 soil samples were taken from the study area. The selected parameters for analysis were the amount of carbon sequestration and certain soil properties (bulk density and organic carbon). Statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS.16.0 software. After assessment of the homogeneity of variance, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed followed by Duncan test at a significance level of 5%. Results demonstrated that the different land uses had different effects on the amount of carbon sequestration. The protected forests and cereal croplands had the highest and lowest carbon sequestration values, respectively. The overall amount of carbon sequestration in this watershed was estimated to be around 743,460 ton/ha.