CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF TREES IN AN URBAN AREA: A CASE STUDY OF SAMBALPUR TOWN IN EASTERN INDIA.

The alarming rise of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere due to urbanization, industrialization, motorization coupled with rapid population growth has been one of the main issues cropped up during the past few decades. This has resulted in many environmental disturbances like change in global temperature, erratic precipitation, melting of polar ice caps, alteration in hot and cold oceanic current, rise in sea level, modification in agricultural pattern, loss of biodiversity, migration of animals including human beings, appearance of diseases, many other socioeconomic problems etc. Trees being the largest terrestrial reservoir of carbon are regarded as the low-cost eco-friendly way of mitigating this problem. The biomass (above ground biomass and below ground biomass) measurements in trees are usually employed to estimate the total carbon sequestering potential of trees in an area. The present study focused on the estimation of above ground and below ground biomass of locally available trees in polluted and non- polluted areas of Sambalpur town located in Western flanks of Odisha State in Eastern India. The result suggested that the girth at breast height (GBH) and height of a tree plays a profound role in carbon sequestration potential. Further, some trees are good performers of carbon sequestration in polluted areas than their counterpart in non-polluted area. Species such as Ficus benghalensis (3355.065 kg C/tree/yr) and Ficus religiosa (1645.335 kg C/tree/yr) showed higher carbon sequestration while, Thevetia peruviana (35.777 kg C/tree/yr), Ziziphus jujuba (36.178 kg C/tree/yr) and Bombax ceiba (44.410 kg C/tree/yr) showed lower carbon sequestration potential. Therefore, trees with higher carbon sequestration potentials may be integrated schematically in the urban areas for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]