Environmental impact assessment of Flora and its role in offsetting carbon along National Highway-16, India

The rapid increase in carbon and other greenhouse gases is likely to change the regional and global temperature, and planning of these gases is needed. The present study focused on National Highway-16 of the Srikakulam district, which was upgraded from 4 to 6 lane standards to facilitate traffic. This study intended to compute the carbon sequestration and storage capacity of above and belowground biomass. This helps in the 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 constructed of criss-crosses of equal size (2 × 100 m). All woody trees with dbh ≥ 30 cm were considered and their diameters were measured. A total of 29 tree species belonging to 13 families were identified; the quantity of macrobiotic carbon sequestered as a whole, i.e., above and below ground, was 768,890.29 _tC and 199,911.48 _tC, respectively. The mean sequestration rate of carbon as biomass above ground was 1.19 tC/tree, and that 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.