Variation Of 2694813C And Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics In The Savannah Of Plateau Bateke Congo Bassin

In Republic of Congo forests occupy 64.6 of the territory. They spread from north to south over nearly 22106 ha distributed in three major zones the forest of the Northern Congo 68 the forest of Chaillu 16 and the forest of Mayombe 7. The remaining 9 are mosaic forests and savannah mostly gallery and forest clump HF forests like in the Iboubikro site 311S 1528E. Currently characterized by a positive dynamics for at least five or six centuries these natural forests could play an important role in the mitigation of CO2 in the atmosphere. The objective of this work i-quantifying carbon stock in forests and savannah ii following deep inputs of organic matter originated from savannah and forest. The results obtained showed that the total carbon up to one meter is more important in the gallery and secondary forest than under the savannah. We obtained up to one meter 6.4 kg.m-2 in the GF 6.2 kg.m-2 in SF and 4.6 kg.m-2 in the savannah. The three means of total C are differ from one site to another p0.0001. A Study of the variation of 2694813C with profile depth showed that in the forest the 2694813C values were close to those of C3 -26 2694813C decrease in depth until -19 in the deepest at -100 cm. Under savannah the 2694813C values are close to those of C4 vegetation -13.6 . In all the profile under savannah we observed that the 2694813C values are constant. We concluded that there is a clear mixture between old organic matter from savannah and the new organic matter from trees. The result suggests a net effect of the growing of forest on the old savannah vegetation due to climate change in this area.