SOIL ORGANIC CARBON ACROSS DIVERSE LAND USE AND FOREST TYPES IN THE INDIAN HIMALAYAN REGION: A REVIEW
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48165/ija.2026.28.02.01Keywords:
Carbon Sequestration, Forest Types, Indian Himalayan Region, Land Use, Soil Organic CarbonAbstract
The Himalaya, commonly known as the Earth's third pole, is India's and many other highly populated Asian countries' primary source of freshwater. The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) covers 530,000 km2 of territory, and runs from Jammu and Kashmir in the north-west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. The IHR is characterized by a forested landscape that covers around 42 percent of the IHR geographical area, and accounts for one-third of India's forest cover. In 2019, India ranked third in term of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after China and the United States. Soil carbon sequestration can be a beneficial mitigating tool as the soil carbon pool is a major component of the world's third-largest carbon pool-the terrestrial carbon pool, and sequestering carbon in the soil boosts the soil's fertility rate.In the present study, the soil organic carbon (SOC) stock value has been reviewed in the three provisions of the IHR: the North-Western Himalaya, the Central Himalaya, and the North-Eastern Himalaya. In comparison to lower altitudes, the higher altitudes store more carbon to upto a certain extent due to low temperature, high moisture and precipitation, and less human interruption. Further, beyond more than 3000m asl, the SOC content starts declining because of the extremely cold conditions, low vegetation cover and snowfall. This review highlights that among different land uses, natural forests have the favourable conditions for SOC storage, and among the forest types, temperate forests have the highest SOC values.
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