Investigation the Impacts of Mechanical Range and Watershed Management Operations on Carbon Sequestration in Gav-dareh Watershed, Kurdistan Province

The global warming due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations, especially carbon dioxide has led to severe climate change over the past decade. This has aggravated the destruction of natural resources, soil and water, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. One of the most important tools for adaptation or correction of the consequences of this crisis is the carbon sequestration using natural ecosystems through efficient management tools such as watershed management. This research was carried out in order to evaluation and quantitative of carbon sequestration by checkdams and banquette in Kurdistan representative site of Gav-dareh. Sampling was done at work units using a systematic random sampling method. And then transferred to the laboratory for analysis. The results of statistical analysis of the data indicate that the amount of carbon dioxide in vegetation cover in treatments has a significant difference at 5% level. Also, the results of total carbon sequestration, including vegetation and soil, indicate that the amount of carbon sequestration has increased due to watershed mechanical management. This increase in banquette and gabion checkdam is significantly higher than the control and in comparison with it, they are in the class of superiority. The mean of total carbon sequestration is 7266 kg/ha which 65 % of that is related to soil sequestration. It is generally concluded that watershed operation, especially banquette as a mechanical operation has high potential in sequestration, and soil is the most important reservoir in this kinds of operations.