Estimations of total ecosystem carbon pools distribution and carbon biomass current annual increment of a moist tropical forest

With increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, there is an urgent need of reliable estimates of biomass and carbon pools in tropical forests, most especially in Africa where there is a serious lack of data. Information on current annual increment (CAI) of carbon biomass resulting from direct field measurements is crucial in this context, to know how forest ecosystems will affect the carbon cycle and also to validate eddy covariance flux measurements. Biomass data were collected from 25 plots of 13 ha spread over the different vegetation types and land uses of a moist evergreen forest of 772,066 ha in Cameroon. With site-specific allometric equations, we estimated biomass and aboveground and belowground carbon pools. We used GIS technology to develop a carbon biomass map of our study area. The CAI was estimated using the growth rates obtained from tree rings analysis. The carbon biomass was on average 264 +/- 48 Mg ha(-1). This estimate includes aboveground carbon, root carbon and soil organic carbon down to 30 cm depth. This value varied from 231 +/- 45 Mg ha(-1) of carbon in Agro-Forests to 283 +/- 51 Mg ha(-1) of carbon in Managed Forests and to 278 56 Mg ha(-1) of carbon in National Park. The carbon CAI varied from 2.54 +/- 0.65 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) in Agro-Forests to 2.79 +/- 0.72 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) in Managed Forests and to 2.85 +/- 0.72 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) in National Park. This study provides estimates of biomass, carbon pools and CAI of carbon biomass from a forest landscape in Cameroon as well as an appropriate methodology to estimate these components and the related uncertainty. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.