Distribution, population structure and carbon storage of bamboo species in Tanzania
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Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
INFORES project
Abstract
Sustainable management of forest resources requires information regarding quantities and quality
of the resources. Despite this fact, the existing information for bamboo forest resources in Tanzania
regarding abundance, distribution along altitudinal ranges, density, basal areas and carbon stocks
is inadequate, site specific and fragmented. Based on 696 plots out of 30 773 plots surveyed by the
National Forest Resources Assessment and Monitoring (NAFORMA), the present study assessed the
distribution, abundance and carbon storage of bamboo species in Tanzania in R software. Results
indicates that, 11 bamboo species from five genera and two tribes were recorded in Tanzania. They are
dominated by Arundinaria alpina and Oxytenanthera abyssinica that constitutes 55.9% of the total
bamboo population and are distributed in only 11 administrative regions of the country. They occur
at altitude of 76 m.a.s.l to 2592 m.a.s.l, whereby about 85.2% of bamboo population are distributed
below 1500 m.a.s.l. Moreover, bamboo occurs more abundantly in woodland (66%) and least in
open land (0.1%). Similarly, most of the bamboo is in the production forests (44.7%) followed by
Agriculture land (19.5%) while wetlands have the least (0.4%). Results further indicates that bamboo
species have a mean stocking, basal area and carbon stocks of 2460 culms/ha, 2.391 m 2 /ha and 1.566
tC/ha respectively. Since most of the carbon is stored by Arundinaria alpina and Oxytenanthera
abyssinica that contributes 58.2% of the total carbon stored by bamboo species in the country, efforts
should be strengthened to manage these species. Likewise, for mitigating climate change bamboo
species should be planted in altitude below 1500 m a.s.l. Due to lack of bamboo allometric biomass
models in Tanzania, the models used in this study was borrowed from Kenya and Ethiopia, indicating
the need to develop such models for Tanzanian bamboo.
Description
Proceedings of the conclusive workshop of the INFORES project, Morogoro, 25th-26th September, 2019. Pp 60-71.
Keywords
Distribution, Bamboo species, Carbon, Population structure