Distribution, population structure and carbon storage of bamboo species in Tanzania

Proceedings of the conclusive workshop of the INFORES project, Morogoro, 25th-26th September, 2019. Pp 60-71.

Sustainable management of forest resources requires information regarding quantities and quality of the resources. Despite this fact, the existing information for bamboo forest resources in Tanzania regarding abundance, distribution along altitudinal ranges, density, basal areas and carbon stocks is inadequate, site specific and fragmented. Based on 696 plots out of 30 773 plots surveyed by the National Forest Resources Assessment and Monitoring (NAFORMA), the present study assessed the distribution, abundance and carbon storage of bamboo species in Tanzania in R software. Results indicates that, 11 bamboo species from five genera and two tribes were recorded in Tanzania. They are dominated by Arundinaria alpina and Oxytenanthera abyssinica that constitutes 55.9% of the total bamboo population and are distributed in only 11 administrative regions of the country. They occur at altitude of 76 m.a.s.l to 2592 m.a.s.l, whereby about 85.2% of bamboo population are distributed below 1500 m.a.s.l. Moreover, bamboo occurs more abundantly in woodland (66%) and least in open land (0.1%). Similarly, most of the bamboo is in the production forests (44.7%) followed by Agriculture land (19.5%) while wetlands have the least (0.4%). Results further indicates that bamboo species have a mean stocking, basal area and carbon stocks of 2460 culms/ha, 2.391 m 2 /ha and 1.566 tC/ha respectively. Since most of the carbon is stored by Arundinaria alpina and Oxytenanthera abyssinica that contributes 58.2% of the total carbon stored by bamboo species in the country, efforts should be strengthened to manage these species. Likewise, for mitigating climate change bamboo species should be planted in altitude below 1500 m a.s.l. Due to lack of bamboo allometric biomass models in Tanzania, the models used in this study was borrowed from Kenya and Ethiopia, indicating the need to develop such models for Tanzanian bamboo.