An Appraisal of Forest Degradation and Carbon Sequestration of Effan Forest Reserve in Kwara State

Abstract

This study describes an effort to estimate amount of forest degradation and carbon sequestration for Effan Forest Reserve using remote sensing/GIS techniques. The study adopted 14 sampled plots-simple randomly based method, Remote Sensing -Land Use/Land Cover based method for change detection, Vegetation Difference Normalized Index (NDVI) to determine vegetation reflectance, field data and use of allometric model equation for biomass and carbon sink estimation. The Results revealed that there was decrease in the Gmelina arborea plantation in which so many trees were harvested thereby converting part of the reserve to Sapling/Shrubs (i.e. re-generating part). Despite the fast regenerating capacity of Gmelina arborea, there is increase in the number of Sapling/Shrubs size in the Reserve which is an evidence of forest degradation between 2001 and 2006. The vegetation reflectance also revealed that vegetation reflectance is high in 2001and is low in 2006 which also confirms an evidence of forest degradation. The total above-ground biomass and carbon sink of the Reserve estimated shows that Standard trees class triples that of Sapling size class. The carbon sequestration capacity is expressed in the following order of magnitude: Standard > Pole >Sapling sized trees. Standard -sized trees have better CO 2 sequestration potential than the Sapling and Pole -sized. However, both had high carbon sequestration potential in the future due to presence of large number of trees belonging to small DBH size classes. Moreover, the forest stand of Effan Reserve has a total sequestration capacity of 40,294.8metric tons of CO 2 .