TREE SPECIES DENSITY ENHANCES SOIL ORGANIC CARBON CONTENT ACROSS DHANMONDI LAKE AREA IN DHAKA CITY

Abstract

The present study was conducted to determine the density of tree species and the amounts of soil organic carbon at the area of Dhanmondi Lake in Dhaka city. The research was carried out during June 2021 to January 2022. The MS Excel application was used to organize and analyze all of the data. In this study, total of 22 families were identified. The total number of plants was discovered to be 134. Swietenia mahagoni (Mahagoni), with a total of nine (9) tree individuals, had the highest percentage of tree individuals (6.72%), while an unidentified species and some others had the lowest percentage (0.75%). Height, DBH and canopy of trees were tabulated by different classes with number of trees. All the structural attributes like relative density (RD %), Relative frequency (RF %), Relative Dominance (RDo %) and Important value index (IVI %) were also calculated. For low, medium, and high-density plots around Dhanmondi lake, the average tree density was 2800, 4500, and 6000 trees/ha respectively. The relationship between soil organic carbon (SOC) and tree density were assessed. Soil organic carbon is higher in high density plots than medium and low-density plots. The relationship between SOC and tree density was positive and statistically significant correlated with carbon in the most cases because sometimes it showed negative and non-significant relationship.