Potential weight of soil organic carbon pool in relation to variation of natural stands biodiversity in Noor Forest Park, Mazandaran province

One of the most important principles of clean development management (CDM) is to maintain or increase organic carbon pool in the natural ecosystems. As keeping the biodiversity is one of the prominent criteria of sustainable development, this study was conducted to study the relationship between the amount of carbon sequestration and plant biodiversity in the natural stands of Alder-Ironwood (AI), Maple- Ironwood (MI) and Elm-Hornbeam (EH) in the Noor Forest Park, Mazandaran province. The main purpose was to see if variation of plant biodiversity represents the optimal monitoring of soil carbon stock in the studied forest. The common diversity indices related to the different plant storeys were calculated in the random distributed plots with 400 m2 and five repetitions in each stand. Furthermore, the 0- 20 and 20 – 40 cm soil depths were sampled in each stand to measure carbon factor. The results showed significant differences amongst the plant biodiversity indices of the studied stands. Only the index of species richness and species dominance of tree storey was not significantly different among the stands. As such, the findings showed that the AI stand had significantly less soil carbon stock in different soil layers compared to other stands; however, the soil organic carbon was significantly higher in the different soil depths in the MI stand. The results of Pearson’s correlation test showed a significant relationship between tree species dominance and mineral layer of soil carbon stock, implying that density and dispersion of dominant tree species in the stands prominently affect the carbon stock of the soil mineral layer. As such, the following results indicated that potential level of carbon pool of soil organic and mineral layers are significantly correlated with the abundance and evenness of herbal storey. Therefore, coverage and distribution of herbal species in the studied forest can be considered to represent the carbon pool weight in the different soil horizons.