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Carbon stock and woody species diversity patterns in church forests along church age gradient in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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Abstract

Most of the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches comprise natural and planted forests and trees on their premises. A study was conducted to investigate carbon stock and woody species diversity patterns along the church age gradient in Addis Ababa city. We hypothesized that the carbon stock would relate to the church age gradient. Thus, the study was conducted in forests belonging to churches that were selected in a stratified random sampling from four age categories with the year of establishments ranging from 1897 to 1993. Counting of all the woody species and DBH and height measurement of all individuals with DBH of 5 cm and above was carried out. Carbon stock and different diversity indices were computed, and the relationships between church age and tree parameters were evaluated. Results showed that the forests were characteristically small (0.6 ± 0.57 ha), and the tree species with the highest total carbon stock were Juniperus procera, Eucalyptus globulus and E. camaldulensis. The mean amount of carbon stock contained in each church forest was 156 ± 92 t ha-1. A total of 50 indigenous and 40 exotic woody species were identified. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) among the four Strata was revealed for the carbon stock of native trees. Correlation analysis also revealed a significant positive relationship between church age and native trees’ carbon stock. We conclude that the church forests have a very important role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, and thus scaling up the long-term maintenance and management of such small-sized forests in urban green spaces is vital.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Ms. Zewdie Woldemariam and other staff members of the Forestry Research Center for their inputs during the planning of the study. The Plantation and Agroforestry Research Directorate of the Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute supported the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute, P. O. Box 24536 code 1000, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Getaw Yilma & Abayneh Derero

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  1. Getaw Yilma
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  2. Abayneh Derero
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Contributions

GY: Participated in conceptualization and setting objectives of the study, carried out the species identification, delineation of forest areas and data collection and data analysis and drafted the original draft and participated in correcting the manuscript after comments by the anonymous reviewers and the Editor.

AD: Conceptualized the study, carried out part of the data analysis, supervised the study, improved the original draft and handled the corrections of the manuscript after comments by the anonymous reviewers and the Editor and enriched the paper.

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Correspondence to Abayneh Derero.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 List of tree species, origin, tree size, carbon stock, and their abundance, density, basal area in seventeen church forests, in decreasing order of total carbon stock
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Yilma, G., Derero, A. Carbon stock and woody species diversity patterns in church forests along church age gradient in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Urban Ecosyst 23, 971–983 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-00961-z

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