ORIGINAL PAPER
Species-specific allometric equations for improving aboveground
biomass estimates of dry deciduous woodland ecosystems
Amsalu Abich
1
•
Tadesse Mucheye
2
•
Mequanent Tebikew
1
•
Yohanns Gebremariam
1
•
Asmamaw Alemu
1
Received: 6 September 2017 / Accepted: 12 January 2018
Ó Northeast Forestry University and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Allometric equations are important for quanti-
fying biomass and carbon storage in terrestrial forest
ecosystems. However, equations for dry deciduous wood-
land ecosystems, an important carbon sink in the lowland
areas of Ethiopia have not as yet been developed. This
study attempts to develop and evaluate species-specific
allometric equations for predicting aboveground biomass
(AGB) of dominant woody species based on data from
destructive sampling for Combretum collinum, Combretum
molle, Combretum harotomannianum, Terminalia laxiflora
and mixed-species. Diameter at breast height ranged from 5
to 30 cm. Two empirical equations were developed using
DBH (Eq. 1) and height (Eq. 2). Equation 2 gave better
AGB estimations than Eq. 1. The inclusion of both DBH
and H were the best estimate biometric variables for AGB.
Further, the equations were evaluated and compared with
common generic allometric equations. The result showed
that our allometric equations are appropriate for estimating
AGB. The development and application of empirical spe-
cies-specific allometric equations is crucial to improve
biomass and carbon stock estimation for dry woodland
ecosystems.
Keywords Woodland Á Allometric equations Á
Aboveground biomass Á Destructive sampling
Introduction
Although the rate of global deforestation is alarming and
leads to increasing carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions, ter-
restrial forest ecosystems play substantial roles in seques-
tering atmospheric CO
2
through photosynthesis and storing
carbon as biomass. According to FAO (2010) estimations,
global forests stored 289 Gt of carbon in biomass alone,
and recently this figure increased to 296 Gt of carbon in
2015 (FAO 2015). Ko
¨
hl et al. (2015) reported the rate of
forest carbon stock loss between 2010 and 2015 to be 0.34
Pg C per year. Woody vegetation is important CO
2
sinks
and approximately 50% of their standing biomass is carbon
(Ravindranath et al. 1997). About 50% of the C (carbon)
sequestered annually by plants is below-ground biomass
(George and Marschner 1996). Ilyas (2013) reported that
67, 19 and 14% of C was stored in stems, branches and leaf
biomass of Acacia mangium Willd, respectively. Estimat-
ing tree and forest biomass is essential for assessing
ecosystem yields and C stocks (Brown 2002;Ko
¨
rner et al.
2005) and serving the implementation of REDD
?
project in
greenhouse gas reduction and other climate change-related
initiatives (Saatchi et al. 2011).
Allometric equations are important tools for quantifying
biomass and C storage in forests, including estimations of
standing biomass and charcoal production (Okello et al.
2001), commercial exploitation of timber—forest prof-
itability and bioenergy (Henry et al. 2011), and
Project funding: The project was fully financed by the University of
Gondar.
The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com
Corresponding editor: Tao Xu.
& Asmamaw Alemu
asmamawalemu@yahoo.com
1
Department of General Forestry, College of Agriculture and
Rural Transformation, University of Gondar, P.O. Box 196,
Gondar, Ethiopia
2
Department of Natural Resource Management, College of
Agriculture and Rural Transformation, University of Gondar,
P.O. Box 196, Gondar, Ethiopia
123
J. For. Res.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0707-5
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