Sequestered Organic Carbon Status in the Soils under Grassland in Uttarakhand State, India

Vegetative growth serves as an important means to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide in biomass and soil. Grassland soils are high in soil organic carbon and contain an extensive fibrous root system that creates an environment ideal for soil microbial activity. Accurate quantification of SOC pool is needed to generate benchmark information for the present and to determine the changes in future. No systematic study has been undertaken to estimate the soil organic carbon pool in grasslands of Uttarakhand state of India. This study therefore, was conducted to estimate SOC pool in the grasslands occurring between the wide altitudinal range of 500m to 4200m above msl. Maximum SOC pool, 142.14 t ha –1 , was observed in the altitudinal range of 2501 to 4200m, followed by 105.28 t ha –1 between 2001-2500 m, 97.80 t ha –1 between 1501–2000 m, 41.15 t ha –1 between 10011500m and the least was 37.09 t ha –1 at 501–1000 m alt itude. The grasslands in Uttarakhand extend over an area of 2,28,900 hectare at different altitudes and contain 26.77 million tons of soil organic carbon pool. Correlation between altitudes and SOC pool revealed that altitude was significantly positively correlated with SOC pool under the grassland with correlation coefficient 0.955 * (Significant at P < 0.05 level). Results of one way ANOVA indicates that SOC pools at different altitude ranges were significantly different at 0.05 level.