Assessment of Carbon Stock in Pichavaram Mangrove Forest Using Remote Sensing And GIS

Abstract

Mangrove forest is an essential ecosystem in coastal locations that provides vital ecological and economic functions. Mangrove forests provide a carbon sink function by sequestering CO₂ from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and carbon storage on the sediment. Carbon stored in mangrove silt will remain for millennia before returning to the atmosphere, acting as a long-term carbon sink. As a result, it is critical to comprehend the spatial and temporal distribution of carbon stored inside mangrove ecosystems. This research describes an effort to map carbon stocks in mangrove forests using remote sensing technology to overcome the limitations of field surveys. The use of medium spatial resolution Landsat 8 OLI is emphasised for mapping mangrove carbon stock. Landsat 8 OLI imageries are inexpensive, widely available, and cover a large region, making them an economic tool to map mangrove carbon reserves. Using Remote Sensing data, image processing techniques such as the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are used to determine the optimum strategy for explaining variance in mangrove carbon stocks.Furthermore, This study attempted to quantify the mangrove carbon sequestration rate using multitemporal analysis. Finally, the maps of carbon stocks in the mangrove forest at Pichavaram are developed for 2015, 2018 and 2020.