CARBON SEQUESTRATION BY MANGROVE FOREST: ONE APPROACH FOR MANAGING CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSION FROM THERMAL POWER PLANTS

AOGS-AGU (WPGM) JOINT ASSEMBLY,2012

International Conference, Singapore,13-17th August 2012.

Carbon Sequestration by Mangrove Forest: One Approach For Managing Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Thermal Power Plants

Raghab RAY^1#+, Tapan Kumar JANA^1
1University of Calcutta, India
^#Corresponding author: raghab.ray@gmail.com ⁺Presenter

In the past decade, anthropogenic emissions of CO₂, primarily as a result of fossil fuel burning, increased at a rate of 3.4% per year and fossil fuel combustion as well as cement industry contribute 7.7 ± 0.5 giga ton of carbon annually to the atmosphere. Tropical forests processes about six times as much carbon as the anthropogenic emission. Mangrove forest accounts 2.4% of tropical forest and in the coastal area it could be one of the possible sink for the anthropogenic carbon dioxide. In this study total amount of coal converted to carbon dioxide by a thermal power plant near the northeast coast of India has been considered and it was found that 2.83 million ton of carbon is added to the atmosphere for the generation of 7469732 MW annually. Indian Sundarban mangrove forest (4264 km²) stores 0.41% of the total carbon storage in the Indian forest (6621 million tone carbon) and uptakes 2.79 million ton carbon annually which is 0.55 % of the annual fossil fuel emission (504.6 million ton carbon per annum) from India. Based on this study, about 4328 km² forest coverage is needed to sequester all carbon dioxide emitted from the thermal power plants. This study would help in great extent for future planning of aforestation program and management of the mangrove forest in the perspective of the use of forest for neutralizing anthropogenic CO₂ emitted during the course of development of Industries in and around Indian coast.