By: OLAJIDE O. .; ETIGALE E. B.;
Abstract:
Global warming is a prevalent climatic phenomenon threatening the existence of man on the earth, and forests have been identified to play an important role. Excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) at the lower region of the atmosphere is the principal gas causing global warming. Forest trees have great physiological capacity to sequester carbon, thereby purifying atmosphere of excessive CO2 and ultimately mitigating global warming. There is dearth of information on carbon sequestration potentials of most tree species in planted forests. Thus, the above-ground of biomass and sequestered carbon in the 22 year old planted forests of Pinus caribaea (coniferous) and Nauclea diderrichii (broadleaved) were evaluated by fitting the collected mensuration data (diameters at breast height and tree heights) to allometric functions. Subsequently, the estimated biomass and carbon values of the trees were subjected to descriptive statistical and linear regression analyses. The results showed that the mean standing biomass of P. caribaea varied between 0.12 ton/tree and 0.020 ton/tree, while that N. diderrichii varied between 0.19 ton/tree and 0.34 ton/tree. The mean sequestered carbon in P. caribaea varied between 0.06 ton/tree and 0.1 ton/tree, while that of N. diderrichii varied between 0.09 and 0.17 ton/tree. The analysis of variance of the regression of diameter at breast and sequestered carbon of both tree species were highly significant (P<0.05), with coefficients of determination of 0.95 and 0.9911 respectively for P. caribaea and N. diderrichii. Following the higher mean standing biomass and mean sequestered carbon in N. diderrichii than P. caribaea, it is recommended that N. diderrichii should be preferred for forest plantation establishment meant for environmental service of mitigating global warming nay climate change mitigation
Keywords: Global warming, Planted forests, Trees, Standing biomass, Sequestered carbon.
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