World Journal of Engineering Research and Technology

*Danteni M., Enokela S.O. and Udochukwu M. O.

ABSTRACT

This study quantitatively gives an insight to the amount of soil organic carbon that has been stocked in different land uses in Makurdi Benue state of Nigeria using three analytical approaches. The Google earth map and the supervised classification (SC) method were used for identification of land use type and sampling locations within the study area. Seven different land uses were identified in Makurdi using soil survey standard test method for organic carbon while the physical properties relevant for estimation of SOC stock were used to classify the soil at each land use, Multivariate analyses were performed for possible correlation, degree of variation and spread of SOC stock within locations and among land uses. The Similarity and significant differences among the land used and their SOC stocks were also tested at 0.05 level of significance by one way analysis of variance. The analytical methods result confirmed that it has taken much of the soil organic carbon stocked in the forested land and wet land which were found to be relatively high with wide range of variability according to individual box plot and 95% CIs. This carbon stock when loss is likely to increase emission from the soil system. The investigated SOC stock was used to develop the SOC stock map of Makurdi based on the land uses as a pilot project for land use administration in Benue state.

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