Carbon Pool Detection Through GIS Techniques and Satellite Data in a Semi Urban Region

This study presents the detection of land surface temperature and carbon pools (stock and its sequestration) using Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques with satellite data. The chosen study area (Imphal West district in the state of Manipur in North East India) has been steadily urbanizing over the last few decades, resulting in significant changes in LULC (landuse/landcover) patterns. Land surface temperature is a very important climatic parameter and is high in urban places with 20.4 °C and low at forest areas with 9.93 °C in the year 1996 and 22.10 and 10.70 °C in the year 2016 respectively in the study region. It was observed that the build-up area increased by around 13% from 1996 to 2026 and crop land decreased by around 9% in this period. Carbon stock and its sequestration are estimated based on the LULC types and it was observed that crop land (around 40%) provides the highest carbon stock and sequestration as compared with other types of land cover patterns. The amount of carbon stock ranges from 0 to a maximum of 26.59 Mg of C in 1996 and slowly decreases to 23.13 Mg of C and 21.27 Mg of C for the years 2016 and 2026, respectively. The predicted carbon sequestration for the year 2026 has been calculated as 0.36 Mg of C. The predicted carbon sequestration indicates that water bodies will contain a minimum of −1.8504 Mg of C and a maximum of 0 Mg of C. Since the water bodies do not have the capacity to hold carbon, the value will remain zero (0). In this study region, there is no change in water bodies, but forest areas have an enormous change in carbon storage capacity due to urbanization and climatic parameters.