Tree Diversity and Carbon Sequestration Potential of An Urban Forest Patch of Pondicherry, India

Urban forests undoubtedly play a foremost role in mitigating the climate change impacts, also contributes to the quality of urban society thereby providing numerous environmental, ecological, psychological and socio-ecological benefits. Particularly knowing any forest's structure, function and value head from its inventory of diversity and richness. So to better understand the above mentioned and their ecosystem service, a work has been conducted in the urban forest patch of Puducherry. Keeping the importance of urban forest patch in a study to access the tree diversity, biomass and carbon stock of the urban forest patch of Puducherry, India has been undertaken. For quantitative assessment, an area of 1 hectare comprising, 25 plots of 20×20m was studied and all trees ≥ 10 cm gbh were enumerated. As a whole, 30 tree species were enumerated belonging to 17 families and 30 genera. Tree number accounted for 586 stems per hectare, the basal area was found to be 34.273 m² ha⁻¹. The total biomass and carbon stock of the patch were found to be 278.22Mgha⁻¹ and 139.11MgCha⁻¹ respectively. This baseline study will further be used to analyze its various components and its ecosystem services, inspiring for its better management.