Ecosystem-level carbon storage and its links to diversity, structural and environmental drivers in tropical forests of Western Ghats, India

Tropical forests are rich in biodiversity with great potential for carbon (C) storage. We estimated ecosystem-level C stock using data from 70 forest plots in three major forest types: tropical dry deciduous (TDD I and TDD II), tropical semi-evergreen (TSE I and TSE II) and tropical evergreen forests (TEF I, TEF II and TEF III) of Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats, India. The average C stock in these forests was 336.8 Mg C/ha, of which 231.3, 3.0, 2.4, 15.2 and 84.9 Mg C/ha were stored in woody vegetation, understorey, litter, deadwood and soil respectively. The live vegetation, detritus and soil contributed 65.5%, 5.5% and 29% respectively to the total ecosystem-level C stock and distributed in forest types in the order: TEF III > TEF II > TEF I > TSE I > TDD II > TSE II > TDD I. The plant diversity, structural attributes and environmental factors showed significant positive correlations with C stocks and accounted for 6.7, 77.2 and 16% of variance. These findings indicate that the tropical forests in the Western Ghats store large amount of C, and resulting data are invaluable for planning and monitoring forest conservation and management programs to enhance C storage in tropical forests.