Soil Carbon Sequestration Capacity in Different Land Uses(Case Study: Award Watershed in Mazandaran Province)

One approach for reducing co2 and increasing global carbon storage iscarbon sequestration in soils. watersheds are important biophysical andtopographic units representing diverse ecosystems. this study aims toevaluate carbon sequestration in different land uses and its economic aspectin the award watershed in mazandaran province. first, the boundary of thewatershed was delineated and controlled by a field survey using gps. then,soil samples were selected randomly, taken from a depth of 0-30 cm for eachland use (i.e., protected forest, open forest, rangelands, walnut gardens,mixed walnut–apple gardens, cereal croplands and frijol farmland). in total,21 soil samples were taken from the study area. the selected parameters foranalysis were the amount of carbon sequestration and certain soil properties(bulk density and organic carbon). statistical analysis was performed usingthe spss.16.0 software. after assessment of the homogeneity of variance,analysis of variance (anova) was performed followed by duncan test at asignificance level of 5%. results demonstrated that the different land useshad different effects on the amount of carbon sequestration. the protectedforests and cereal croplands had the highest and lowest carbon sequestrationvalues, respectively. the overall amount of carbon sequestration in thiswatershed was estimated to be around 743,460 ton/ha.