Environmental Impact Assessment of Flora and its Role in Offsetting Carbon along National Highway-16, India

Abstract

Abstract Quick upsurge of carbon and other greenhouse gases are liable to change the global temperatures, to hold back these gases planned efforts are needed. Present study focused on National Highway-16 of Srikakulam district, which is upgraded from 4 to 6 lane standard to facilitate the traffic has stimulated concerns. This study intended to compute the carbon sequestration and storage capacity of above and below ground biomass. This helps in comparison and impact of the road project on flora and its carbon pool, from where future tree stock changes can be prepared. A total of 1930 plots were made scientifically in crisscross way of equal size (2 x 100 m), all woody trees with dbh ≥ 30cm were considered and measured their diameters. In which a total of 29 tree species belongs to 14 families were identified; the quantity of macrobiotic carbon sequestered as a whole i.e. above and below ground was 768890.29 tC; 199911.48 tC respectively. The mean sequestration rate of carbon as biomass at the above ground was 1.19 tC/ tree and below ground was 0.31 tC/ tree. The estimated average C-Stock per tree was 1.5 tC, however, the mean C-Stock per quadrate was 250.2 tC is recorded.