Land use changes and modeling carbon fluxes from satellite data Original Research Article

Quantification of carbon fluxes and understanding the human induced global climatic changes forms one of the major study with respect to International Geosphere Biosphere Programme. In the present study an attempt has been made to quantify the carbon fluxes through mathematical modeling of land use/land cover changes (LU/LC) Digital change image from satellite data, over two time periods has been used as an input in studying LU/LC changes and thereby carbon dynamics. Information pertaining to LU/LC has been mathematically modeled through land use transition matrix, with leading diagonal elements representing the land use of retained category of carbon accumulation and off-diagonal elements representing the changes in land use over a period of time. Total carbon flux has been modeled by taking areal estimates of LU/LC changes of two time periods and carbon factors for soil and standing biomass. Trace gases from shifting cultivation areas have been quantified based on ratioʹs of non carbondioxide trace gases to total carbon released by burning. Results of the study, through land use transition matrix suggests that over a period of eight years, 16.1% of dense forest and 10.02% of scrub forests were converted into agricultural lands. In the conversion process, there has been a loss of 47.97 Mt of Carbon from the forested lands. Dry matter burnt through shifting cultivation has been found to be 16.81 Mt. Green house gas emissions calculated from total carbon released associated with shifting cultivation suggests that CO2, CH4, CO, NO and NOx emissions accounted for about 8.405 Mt, 0.315 Mt, 1.77 Mt, 9.24 X 10−4 Mt and 3.34 X 10−3 Mtʹs respectively from the study area.