International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B8, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
     
ASSESSMENT OF INDIAN CARBON CYCLE COMPONENTS USING EARTH 
OBSERVATION SYSTEMS AND GROUND INVENTORY 
V.K. Dadhwal 
National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Hyderabad — 500625, India 
KEYWORDS: Carbon, Vegetation, Atmosphere, GIS, Forestry, Soil, Oceans 
ABSTRACT 
Improved national carbon assessments are important for UNFCC communications, policy studies and improving the global 
assessment. Use of EO for land cover dynamics, forest type, cover and phytomass carbon density, productivity and related soil 
carbon density and regional extrapolation of point flux measurements. A National Carbon Project (NCP) under the Indian Space 
Research Organisation - Geosphere Biosphere Programme (ISRO — GBP) aims at improving the understanding and quantification of 
net carbon balance. The NCP has been implemented with three major components — (A) vegetation carbon pools, (B) Soil carbon 
pools and (C) Soil and Vegetation — Atmosphere Fluxes. A total of 6500 field plot data from forests and trees outside forests have 
been collected. 1500 field plots have been inventoried for the soil carbon based on the remotely sensed data stratification. A 
nationwide network of carbon flux towers in different ecosystems for the measurement and modeling of the net carbon flux using 
eddy covariance techniques is being established and upscaling using satellite remote sensing data and modelling is under process. 
The amplitude of the diurnal variation in NEE increased with growth of wheat and reached its peak around the pre-anthesis stage. 
Besides, under NCP, satellite diurnal CO, have also analyzed the data obtained from AIRS and SCIAMACHY over India and 
surrounding oceans and was correlated with surface fluxes. The CASA model simulations over India using NOAA AVHRR NDVI. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The annual carbon pools inclusive of the atmosphere to the 
biosphere become critical in regulating the increasing rate of 
atmospheric CO,. Monitoring regional carbon storage and its 
flux is of paramount importance for improving the state of the 
biosphere's health and system for carbon credit trading (Bonan, 
1995; Chen et al., 2000). 
India is a large country with 329 million hectares of 
geographical area situated in the tropics between 8° and 38° N 
latitude and 66° and 100° E longitude. The climate of the 
country varies from monsoonal in the south to temperate in the 
north. The country has a diverse vegetation cover. Of the total 
geographic area of the country, forest and agricultural land 
accounts about 21 and 55%, respectively. Many studies are 
being carried out to estimate the terrestrial NPP and analyse its 
spatio-temporal variability over India (Hingane, 1991; Dadhwal 
and Nayak, 1993; Chhabra and Dadhwal, 2004; Nayak et al., 
2009). However, most of these studies could not explain the 
broad spectrum of NPP seasonal variability over the country; 
they led to different estimates of seasonal and annual NPP 
budgets over the country owing to the following limitations: (1) 
studies are carried out for different years; (2) different 
methodology and datasets are being used, (3) no attempts are 
made to describe inter-annual variability of NPP over India. 
Furthermore, a direct estimation and comprehensive analysis on 
inter-annual variability of net primary productivity over the 
country has not been adequately investigated. 
Indian terrestrial ecosystem acts as spatially and temporally 
Variant carbon source and sink due to monsoon based climate 
System; diverse land use and land cover distribution and 
cultural practices. The agriculture covering around 180 M ha 
and forests covering 68 M ha contributes largely to terrestrial 
carbon dynamics in India (Chhabra and Dadhwal 2004, Kaul et 
al 2009) The diverse cropping patterns, wet land rice 
ecosystems and temporally variant dry land agriculture makes 
Indian agriculture carbon fluxes assessment and understanding 
complex. The diverse forest structure and composition, 
phenology, fire regimes, biotic disturbances, extractions and 
large reservoir of trees outside forests plays larger role in 
Carbon sequestration and shaping the carbon budget (Bhat and 
Ravindranath, 2011). Unlike the regular forest inventories, soil 
inventories are rarely repeated on a regular basis and require 
chrono sequenced sampling to understand the impacts of 
different management regimes and land use changes on Carbon 
dynamics. 
Approximately 0.8 Pg C yr! is transported to the oceans by the 
world's rivers and India has several perennial rivers and long 
coastline. It is important to properly understand air sea CO; 
exchanges and quantify the Carbon estimates due to fresh water 
and coastal dynamics as it constitutes a redirection of a 
substantial portion of the net terrestrial sink (Doney and Hood, 
2002). The diverse natural and anthropogenic sources of CO; 
and long range transport of atmospheric gases across varied 
topographic gradients as a function of intra and inter annual 
climatic variations affects sink potential of different categories 
of land cover. This necessitates regular measurements and 
monitoring of atmospheric CO; and its transport modelling. 
There has been an increasing trend in assimilating EO data 
towards understanding of land surface processes, climate 
measurements and carbon pools and fluxes (IPCC 1995). 
Estimation of net carbon flux caused by deforestation and 
afforestation in India (Kaul et al 2009; Subodh et al., 2011) are 
a few recent studies reported over India using EO data. 
In order to address the mentioned knowledge gaps, under ISRO 
Geosphere and Biosphere programme, National Carbon Project 
(NCP) was undertaken with the following major goals 
» Assessment of Carbon Pools, Fluxes and Net Carbon bal- 
ance for terrestrial biomes in India 
» To establish an observational network and create remote 
sensing-based spatial databases for modeling and period 
assessment of net carbon balance in India 
» To provide support to Second National Communication 
(SNC) activity of Ministry of Environment and Forests, 
GOI to UNFCC with respect to carbon balance