Biomass and carbon stock estimation at micro watershed level using remote sensing and GIS
Student name: Mr Vivek Ratan
Guide: Dr P K Joshi
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Rishu Kumar
Abstract: An accurate assessment of above ground biomass is requires for sustainable
management of forests and it better helps in understanding the significant role of
forests as sources and sink of carbon.It is required to estimate the amount of
biomass present in forests because it is directly related to biogeochemical cycle and
plays a significant role in maintenance of carbon cycle in atmosphere. Once the
amount of biomass is estimated it becomes easy to compute the amount of carbon
stock present in the particular forests. Many of the researchers have conducted the
ground based measurement of biomass using sampling plot technique. Parameters
like diameter at breast height, tree height, specific density of wood etc. are required
to compute the biomass of a tree on field. In other techniques, it is required to cut
the trees and the oven dry weight of wood is measured. All such methods for
biomass estimation are however accurate in themselves but to conduct such
experiments is very tiresome and expensive. Sometimes it is not possible to reach
and explore every place. In such a scenario, the remote sensing technique can play a
significant role.In the present study an effort has been made to estimate the biomass
and carbon stock in micro watersheds using remote sensing technique and ground
based inventory. To collect the ground based data for biomass, sample plot
technique is used and calculations are done for biomass computation. Remote
sensing method for biomass estimation is based on the statistical regression
equations. First of all a correlation is being developed between ground biomass and
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Based on the correlation coefficients
obtained from regression equation the value of above ground biomass is computed
for each micro watershed. Carbon stock present in micro watersheds is estimated
from biomass values by multiplying it with a factor of 0.47 (IPCC 2006 guidelines).
It is observed that the total biomass present in an area of 39864.9 hectares is
324742.4 tonnes and the carbon stock present is 152628.4 tonnes . For further
improving the results, some other vegetation indices could be used and
incorporating more number of field sample plots may provide further accuracy.
Key Words: Above ground biomass, carbon stock, micro watersheds, carbon cycle,
NDVI
