Carbon stock and its distribution of three typical forest types in southeastern Guizhou Province, southwestern China

The carbon stock and its distribution at tree, understory and soil layers were examined through field sampling and laboratory analysis in three typical forest types in the southeast of Guizhou Province, southwestern China. The results were as follows: 1) the carbon stocks of tree layers in the secondary evergreen broadforest(SEBF), Masson pine plantation(MPP) and wepping cypress plantation(WCP) were 42.31, 30.82 and 8.34 Mg/ hm2 respectively. The carbon storage of understory layer in SEBF was significantly higher than that in MPP and WCP. Carbon density of soil layers (0 -30 cm) in SEBF was 112.60 Mg/ hm2, which was about 1.8 and 4.8 times of that in MPP and WCP respectively. 2) The distribution of carbon storage showed the trend of soil layer tree layer understory layer in the three typical forests, carbon storage of soil layer and tree layer were more than 66% and 26% of the total carbon stocks respectively. And 3) as the undisturbed native vegetation, carbon stock of SEBF was 155.87 Mg/ hm2, which was significantly higher than MPP and WCP, this implied the high potential of carbon sequestration through vegetation restoration in the southeast of Guizhou Province. The Masson pine and native evergreen broadleaved tree species should be chosen to sequester more carbon during vegetation restoration in the research area.