Tropentag, September 17 - 19, 2014 in Prague, Czech Republic "Bridging the gap between increasing knowledge and decreasing resources"

Impact of Human Activities on Carbon Sequestration in a Semi-Arid Ecosystem of Northeastern Mexico

Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Dept. of Silviculture, Mexico

Abstract

One of the main risks that could endanger the permanence of carbon stocks in forests is the risk associated with the demand: when demand for agricultural and/or livestock is the main cause of deforestation. Carbon content in the aboveground biomass was estimated in different land use systems in abandonment in a fraction of Tamaulipan thornscrub. The study was conducted in the ecological reserve of the Forest Sciences Faculty, UANL, and in three contiguous areas, with secondary vegetation; study systems were primary scrub, traditional agriculture (24 years of abandonment), clearcut (27 years of abandonment) and grasslands (30 years of abandonment). For the estimation of the carbon content a systematic sampling design was used, in each area four sampling sites of 1,600 m². The primary scrub has the highest carbon content with 11.70 MgC ha^-1 in the aboveground biomass, the value is drastically reduced in the recovered systems with 8.03 MgC ha^-1 in grasslands, 4.67 MgC ha^-1 in clearcut and 2.98 MgC ha^-1 in traditional agriculture. Recovering the initial state of the primary scrub take many years, as can be seen in the grasslands system 30 years reaching only 68% of what it had in reserves of primary scrub, with the carbon sequestration potential of 0.27 MgC ha^-1 year^-1 which equals 0.99 MgCO₂e ha^-1 year^-1. Although also shown as a risk to ecosystem conversion to other uses and therefore with a high potential to develop into sources of emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, tamaulipan thornscrub has great potential as carbon storage, presents a wide capacity of mitigation due to its important surface.

Keywords: Aboveground biomass, carbon content, land use systems in abandonment, Tamaulipan thornscrub

Contact Address: Israel Yerena Yamallel, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Dept. of Silviculture, Linares, Mexico, e-mail: yamallelhotmail.com