Biomass and carbon sequestration of native forests in the northwest of Iran

The estimation of carbon storage and accumulation in forest ecosystems is nessessary to assess the role of these resources in the global carbon budget. Therefore, we considered the potential and distribution of organic carbon in the natural pure and mixed beech, oak and maple forests of Fandogloo region of Ardabil province in Iran. In each stand, 6-nested plots were used in the square shape. four profiles were used in each plot and the soil samples were taken from three depths. The highest amount of soil organic carbon sequestration was found in the mixed stand of oak-maple (26.35 Mg.ha-1). The same trend was seen in the amount of total nitrogen (TN) in the soil. The highest amount of carbon sequestration was observed in the forest floor litter in the mixed stand of maple - beech (4.11 Mg.ha-1). The high amount of carbon sequestration in the mixed stand of oak - maple may be due to the lower amount of clay in the soil of this stand. It is likely that the soil fertility is low in the maple–beech stand so that the activities of microorganisms are less than other stands so that due to no degradation, the accumulation of litter has occurred. Totally, the pure beech stand showed the highest amount of total carbon sequestration in the entire pure stand (61.93 Mg.ha-1). The high above- and belowground biomass in the beech stand was the effective factor to increase the total carbon sequestration compared to other stands.