Influence of Aspects on Dense and Sparse Forest for Sequestrating Organic Carbon in Soils of Kumta Taluka

The study was carried out in Kumta taluka of Uttara Kannada district during the year 2013 to assess the role of aspects for sequestering the carbon in soil by dense and sparse forest and total soil organic carbon (SOC) pool in different land use land cover classes. The result revealed that the total and average SOC pool was 8.003 million tonnes and 144.08 t/ha respectively. Among the different LULC classes, dense forest shown higher SOC pool (179.2 t/ha) followed by sparse forest, open land and agricultural land. The western aspect found to influence soil carbon sequestration in both dense forest (190.44 t/ha) and sparse forest (184.50 t/ha) followed by eastern, southern and northern aspects. The study indicated that dense forest found to sequester 2.24 times more soil carbon as compare to agriculture.