Assessment of Carbon Emission by Fuel Wood Burning at Different Altitudes in Five Districts of Uttarakhand in Western Himalaya

Vivek Joshi¹, C.K. Dhyani¹, Kusum Arunachalam^1, and Ujjwal Kumar¹

¹School of Environment and Natural Resources Doon University, Dehradun, India

Cite this paper:
Vivek Joshi, C.K. Dhyani, Kusum Arunachalam and Ujjwal Kumar. Assessment of Carbon Emission by Fuel Wood Burning at Different Altitudes in Five Districts of Uttarakhand in Western Himalaya. Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences. 2020; 8(6):451-458. doi: 10.12691/aees-8-6-17

Abstract

Fuel-wood burning is a major part of fulfilling energy requirement in rural Uttarakhand India. To analyze CO₂ emission from fuel wood burning /consumption rate at the household level at different altitude villages we surveyed seventy-two (N=72) villages in five (N=5) districts in Uttarakhand. The villages were categorized into three categories based on their altitudes (I) 1000-2000mts., (II) 2001-2300 Mtr., (III) 2301- 3200 Mtr. Fuel-wood consumption was estimated by closely calculating the daily actual wood consumed at the household level in villages categorized according to altitude. In the study 351 households were surveyed, of this 28 %, were between 1000-2000mts., 55.8%, of households were sampled in villages between 2001-2300 Mtr., and 16% of households were sampled between 2301 - 3200 Mtr. respectively. The average fuel-wood consumption at households’ level in categories (I) was 11 kg/ day, in category (II) was 14.6 kg/day and in category (III) it was 17.2 kg/day. The overall average value of fuel-wood consumption in all three categories was 14.26 kg/day/ household at the state level. Twenty-nine (N=29) species are primarily being used as fuel-wood in which Litcea monopetela, Bahunia varigata, Grewia, optiva, Pirus pashia, Pinus roxburghii, Quercus leucotricophora and Myrica sapadia, Betula Utilis has a major share. Annual carbon emission from fuel-wood burning in rural areas was also estimated using the formula provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 1996). The annual carbon emission values for sampled villages in five districts of Uttarakhand (rural) are (I) Almora 1081.4 MtCO₂, (II) Bageshwer 479.1 Mt CO₂, (III) Champawat 405.6M t CO₂(IV) Pithoragarh 829.8 Mt CO₂(V) Tehri Garhwal 1025.7 MtCO ₂. The total CO₂ emission value for all five districts was 3821.6 MtCO₂ annually through fuel-wood burning.

Keywords:
carbon emission fuel-wood IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) consumption rates t CO₂

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