Forest Soil & Land Reclamation Division, Forest Research Institute, P.O. New Forests, Dehra Dun 248006 (UK) India

 Recently, the greenhouse effect has been of great concern, and has led to scientists for quantitative estimation of SOC stock. Soil organic carbon stock studies in Indian Himalayan forests are very scanty. Therefore, this study was under taken to estimate the SOC stock in coniferous and well as in broad leaved forests of Uttarakhand. Soil sampling was done in entire Uttarakhand under all coniferous and broad leaved forests. All the thirteen districts were covered and soil samples collected from available forests covers within the district. Coniferous forests have higher SOC stock individually as compared to broad leaved forests as far as per ha basis is concern. On an average, organic carbon stock in the soils under coniferous forests was 79.21 t/ha while under broad leaved forests it was 71.06 t/ha. Over all, coniferous forests had 40.60 million tons of SOC stock while broad leaved forests contained 91.47 million tons of SOC stock in the state. Broad leaved forests have 125.35% higher total SOC stock as compared to conifers forests. It was due to the difference in the area occupied by both types of the forests in the state. Broad leaved forests occupied 13,10,503.32 ha area while conifers forests have only 5,24,180.86 ha area in entire Uttarakhand. Results of one - way ANOVA indicates that SOC stock between conifers and broad leaved forest were significantly different at 0.05 level (Variance ratio, F= 25.601; p <0.05).

Keywords: Coniferous forest, Broad leaved forest, Carbon sequestration, Soil organic carbon, Mitigation potential.