Assesment of Carbon Storage for a Conversion Landscape from

Forest to Coffee Garden in Gayo Plateau to Mitigate Climate Change

Onrizal

Faculty of Forestry, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Jl. Tridharma Ujung No. 1 Kampus USU, Medan, Indonesia

Keywords: Forest Carbon, Gayo Coffee Plantation, Global Warming, Highland Agriculture, Tropical Forest.

Abstract: According to CO

emission mitigation through REDD scheme, valuing of carbon (C) storage for landscape

conversion from forest to coffee in Gayo plateau is important to assess. Vegetation analyses and allometry

equation were used to estimate C stock of forest and several ages of coffee plantations and natural forests at

Gayo plateau, Aceh. Primary forests contained aboveground C stock higher than secondary forests and

coffee plantation both mono-and-poly-culture of shading-tree. The highest value of aboveground C stock

was found at tropical broadleaf forests (213.05 ton C/ha or 781.91 ton CO

e/ha), followed by primary pine

forests (160.54 ton C/ha, 589.18 ton CO

e/ha) and secondary broad leaf forests (104.82 ton C/ha, 384.70 ton

e/ha). Coffee plantations with a poly-culture of shading-tree system have good ability to conserve

carbon. The highest value of aboveground C stock of coffee plantation was 70.97 ton C/ha or 260.47 ton

e/ha. The result suggests that to increase C stock of coffee plantation, the selection of shading-tree

species is one of important key. The shading-tree of Persea americana, Artocarpus heterophyllus and Citrus

sp. have good ability in carbon fixation, while the species also could produce commercial fruits besides

coffee bean production.

1 INTRODUCTION

Changes in carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems

as result of human land use and activities have

become concern for combating the issues of climate

change. Climate change has threatened life on earth,

as well known it disturbs the environmental and

ecosystem services, patterns of rainfall and seasons

as well as all living things. Thus, the world is in a

hazardous period. To date, reducing emissions from

forest loss and degradations as well as preserving

virgin and undisturbed forests will be important key

for future actions in mitigating climate change. It

means forests become a problem due to forest

destruction and loss. On the other hand, forests

become a solution for climate change if forests are

protected from degradations and human

disturbances.

Globally, forest degradation and loss contributed

for 1/5 to 1/4 (Allen et al., 2010, Myers, 2007,

Santili et al., 2005) of total CO

emission annually

and are to be one important factors of climate

changes as well as global warming. Almost 96% of

the emissions from forest loss are coming from

tropical developing countries. Some the main

activities that are caused by humans are driving

forest loss and degradation, including weak land use

policies and applications, unsecure property rights,

inadequate legislation, commercial farming and

logging, and limited capacity to protect and

preserving the forests. It also produced seriously

impacts of environmental and socio-economic; most

of them are disproportionately affected by the poor.

Avoided forest loss activities in mitigating

climate change are a competitive, low-cost reduction

options. A program of 10% abatement in forest loss

in period of 2005 - 2030 could provide 0.3–0.6 Gt

ꞏyr

−1

in abatement of emission and a half

abatement in forest loss from 2005 to 2030 could

provide 1.5–2.7 Gt CO

ꞏyr

−1

in emission abatements

(Kindermann et al., 2008). On the other hand, forest

conversions in Sumatra are usual to meet

international demand for global consumer products.

Subsequently, it drives forest loss as well as various

social and ecological impacts. As a consequence,

farming is greatly relied to be one of the main causes

of deforestation. All over the globe, forests are

providing way to crops for spices, coffee, oil palm

and others. As a study case, forest of Bukit Barisan

National Park in Lampung Province in period of

Onrizal, .

Assesment of Carbon Storage for a Conversion Landscape from Forest to Coffee Garden in Gayo Plateau to Mitigate Climate Change.

DOI: 10.5220/0010089600780082

In Proceedings of the International Conference of Science, Technology, Engineering, Environmental and Ramiﬁcation Researches (ICOSTEERR 2018) - Research in Industry 4.0, pages

78-82

ISBN: 978-989-758-449-7

1972-2006 was loss of 21% (Philpott et al., 2008,

Gaveau et al., 2009). Almost of forest conversion

(80%) caused by farming development. In the

national park, the forest loss agents are farmers who

are estimated as many as 15,000 farmers who are

currently planting coffee. One of the direct causes is

the price of coffee; and the principal causes are

conditions of socio-economic and law enforcement.

Farmers prefer to grow coffee rather than work

elsewhere because rural labor is poorly paid (circa

$2 a day). Higher local coffee prices conjoined with

cheap labor cost, rather than price of coffee, is the

synergistic fundamental cause of forest loss in

Indonesia's main coffee production.

A well know Gayo plateau, Aceh is one of the

popular producer of the agroforest-based organic

coffee, called Gayo coffee for a long time. Gayo

refers to one of Acehnese ethnic group that they live

on Gayo highlands, spread at three district of Aceh

province, i.e. Gayo Luwes District, Bener Meriah

District and Central Aceh District, that is situated at

northern part of Bukit Barisan Mountains in

Sumatra. The Arabica coffee crops situated in

contiguous areas of high-storage of forest carbon

and high-rich biodiversity of Ulu Masen and Leuser

Forest Ecosystems in northern tip of Sumatra.

Initially, coffee plantations in the plateau mostly

converted virgin forests to coffee garden through

slash and burn method in land clearing. Therefore,

the objectives of this research were to assess the

carbon storage of coffee garden in the study area

based on various coffee cultures as well as the

carbon storage of virgin and disturbed forests around

the coffee plantation in Gayo plateau, and to search

opportunities of coffee agroforest system for

abatement emission from forest loss.

2 MATERIAL AND METHOD

2.1 Study Site

The fieldwork was carried out at Gayo plateau, Aceh

province, distributed at two district, namely Central

Aceh and Bener Meriah. The land-use types are

natural forests both primary and secondary, and

agroforest coffee gardens both monoculture-and-

polyculture of shading-tree. There are two forest

types at the area, i.e. tropical pine forests and mixed

tropical forests (or tropical broadleaf forests).

Subsequently, Pinus merkusii dominated tropical

pine forests in surrounding area. The site elevation

ranges from 900 to 1,600 m asl.

2.2 Method

Twenty-four 0.2 ha sample plots were established in

coffee garden (12 sampling plots) and natural forests

(12 sampling plots). Hairiyah et al. (2001) and IPCC

(2006) were used in collecting biomass data

collections. All living trees with a stems diameter

over 10 cm (big trees) and from 5 to 10 cm (small

trees) were measured the stem diameter at breast

height (DBH) and the plant species were identified

in standard sample plot (20m x 100m) and small

sample plot or sub-plots (5m x 40m), respectively.

Specimen of each tree species in the sampling plots

was collected to identify in herbarium. For the

coffee garden, stand age, both coffee plant and

shading-tree are based on information from the

garden owner.

Tree biomass (W, dry weight) was estimated

using the allometry equation of Solichin et al. (2017)

for the tropical mixed forests. Allometry equation of

Heriyanto et al. (2002) was used to estimate the

aboveground of natural pine (Pinus merkusii)

forests. For agroforestry plant, such coffee and

banana, separate allometric equations from Hairiyah

et al. (2001) was used. Total carbon content was

calculated from dry weight assuming a carbon

content (per unit biomass) of 0.5 (Delaney and

Roshetko, 1999.

Undergrowth plants and litters were harvested in

3 units of 1m x 1m sub-plot in each sampling plot

and weighted in the field for completely fresh

weight. Samples were transported to Research

Laboratory of Agriculture Laboratory, Universitas

Sumatera Utara. Each sample was dried using a

constant temperature oven. Drying took 2 days

(85

C) for leaves and woody biomass under 10 cm

diameter, and 4 days (85

C) for woody biomass over

10 cm of diameter. After measuring dry weight of

each sample, completely dry weight (D

) was

calculated based on Heriyanto et al. (2002)

Subsequently, organic carbon content of

undergrowth plants and litters were analyzed by

using the Wakley and Black method (Sulaeman et

al., 2005).

3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Composition and Stand Structure

Overall, 64 species were randomly distributed in all

sites. Tropical broad leaf forests were recorded as

richness with 49 tree species where they were

distributed in both primary forests (32 species) and

Assesment of Carbon Storage for a Conversion Landscape from Forest to Coffee Garden in Gayo Plateau to Mitigate Climate Change

secondary forests (28 species). On the other hand,

only one species of tree larger than 5 cm DBH,

namely Pinus merkusii was found in tropical pine

forests both secondary and primary pine forests.

For coffee crop, there were 14 species of

shading-tree, which were distributed from one to

nine species in each site. All of shading-tree species

was different compared than natural forests. The

species of Leucaena leucocephala was found in all

coffee gardens as shading-tree. The local community

informed that the species is used to be very popular

as shading-tree of coffee garden (distribution [F]

100%). Tropical forest has rich biodiversity (Slik et

al. 2015) both plant and animal. As implication, the

conversion of tropical broadly forests to coffee

garden caused declining tree diversity

Practically, there were two system of shading-

tree of coffee garden, i.e. mono-and-polyculture

shading-tree. The species of L. leucocephala is

always used as one of them as shading-tree of coffee

garden. Some tree species, such as Citrus sp. (F

83.3%), Persea americana (F 50.0%) and

Artocarpus heterophyllus (F 50.0%) were common

used as shading-tree which planted together L.

leucocephala, called polyculture of shading-tree.

Gayo plateau is also known as producer of lemon

fruit from Citrus sp. tree, and avocado fruits from P.

americana tree. The polyculture system could

increase the products as well as income of the

farmers from the produced-fruits.

Density and basal area of trees were increase

from secondary forests to primary forests both broad

leaf forests and pine forests in study site. Mean

density of trees larger than 5 cm DBH in all forest

types were range from 349 to 805 stem/ha. The

highest density of trees was found in primary broad

leaf forests (805 stem/ha) and the lower of density of

trees was distributed in secondary pine forests (349

stem/ha). Most part of basal area value in tropical

broad leaf forests was contributed by big trees with

DBH larger than 100 cm which mean density was 10

stem/ha. Basal area of secondary broad leaf forests

and secondary pine forests were only 57.8% and

37.7% of primary broad leaf forests and primary

pine forests, respectively. The highest basal area was

also found in primary broad leaf forest (35.69

/ha), with a standard deviation of 0.03 and the

lower basal was found in secondary pine forests

(12.95 m

/ha).

Density of coffee plant and shading-tree of the

coffee garden varied, ranging from 2,100 to 6,000

stem/ha, with an average of 3,367 stem/ha.

Subsequently, the shading-tree density ranges from

125 to 1,650 stem/ha, with an average of 580

stem/ha. Therefore, average density of coffee plant:

shading-tree ratio was 85:15. Based on the data,

some of shading-tree density was larger than density

of primary pine forests and secondary forests.

3.2 Biomass and Carbon Stock

Primary forests contained aboveground biomass

higher than secondary forests and coffee garden both

mono-and-poly-culture of shading-tree. Figure 1

shows the mean of aboveground biomass, carbon

stock and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO

e) at

natural forests, both primary and secondary forests.

The highest aboveground biomass, C stock and

e were recorded at tropical broad leaf forests,

followed by primary pine forests, secondary broad

leaf forests, and secondary pine forests. The biomass

of understory and litter was only less than 2% of

total of aboveground biomass.

Figure 1: Mean of aboveground biomass, carbon stock and

carbon dioxide equivalent (CO

e) of natural forests at

study sites; (PB = primary broad leaf forests; SB =

secondary broad leaf forests; PP = primary pine forests;

SP = secondary pine forests).

The aboveground biomass of primary forests

both broad leaf forests and pine forests at this study

site was lower than primary rain forest at

Batangtoru, North Sumatra (ranging from 551.8 to

623.0 ton/ha) (Onrizal et al., 2008). While the

aboveground biomass of primary broad leaf forests

at this study site was higher than Amazon forests,

with ranging from 356.2 to 376.6 ton/ha (Fearnside

et al., 1999, Nascimento and Laurance, 2002) and

similar with tropical Asia (Slik et al., 2013), but the

aboveground biomass of primary pine forests at

study site was lower than Amazon forests, relatively.

The aboveground biomass of coffee gardens

were depend on the density and age of coffee plant

as well as density, age and culture system of

shading-tree. However, the aboveground biomass of

coffee plants mostly increased from lower stand age

ICOSTEERR 2018 - International Conference of Science, Technology, Engineering, Environmental and Ramiﬁcation Researches

into upper stand age. The highest value of

aboveground biomass of coffee garden was found at

14 years-old coffee crop, i.e. 142.91 ton/ha or

equivalent to 70.97 ton C/ha and 260,47 ton

e/ha. The biomass of coffee plant : shading-tree

ratio at 14 years-old of coffee crop was 11 : 89.

Subsequently, the age of shading-tree at the sample

plot is mixed age (or uneven age), with stand age of

the shading-tree is up to 60 years-old with

polyculture system of shading-tree. The shading-tree

of P. americana and A. heterophyllus only

composed 11.9% of total density of shading-tree at

the plot, but the contribution reached 67.3% of

aboveground biomass within the sample plot of 14

years-old of coffee crop. The contribution of P.

americana and A. heterophyllus was larger than the

main species of shading-tree, i.e. L. leucocephala

(9.6% of aboveground biomass), however, it

composed 54.9% of total density of shading-tree.

The second higher value of aboveground

biomass of coffee garden was placed at 28 years-old

coffee crop and 30 years-old shading trees. The

aboveground biomass of the crop was 132.12 ton/ha

or equivalent to 65.80 ton C/ha and 241.50 ton

e/ha which biomass ratio of coffee plant :

shading-tree is 36 : 64.

The third higher value of aboveground biomass

of coffee garden was found at the stand age of coffee

plant and shading-tree were 10 years-old and up to

30 years-old, repectively. The aboveground biomass

at the sample plot C09 was 128.78 ton/ha or

equivalent to 64.14 ton C/ha and 235.40 ton CO

e/ha

which biomass ratio of coffee plant : shading-tree is

16 : 84. It should be noted that the aboveground

biomass at top three of coffee garden is hinger than

secondary broad leaf forests and secondary pine

forests around the area.

Based on this study result, the annual C stock

increments of coffee plant was average of 0.87 ton

C/ha/year, with a standard deviation 0.21. The

annual C stock increments of shading-tree were

average of 0.92 ton C/ha/year, with a standart

deviation of 0.48. Totally, the annual C stock

increments of existed coffee garden at the study site

was average of 1.72 ton C/ha/years, with a standard

deviation of 0.41. On the other hand, the

contribution of understory, stump and litter on total

of aboveground biomass of the existed coffee garden

was only 9.7%, with a standard deviation of 7.6. The

understrory, stump and litter contribution on

aboveground biomass was an average of 7.5 ton/ha,

with a standard deviation of 5.1.

Generally, the biomass ratio of the existed coffee

plant : shading-tree was 37 : 63, with a standard

deviation of 24. The biomass ratio of coffee plant :

shading-tree was opposited on the composition of

coffee garden which the ratio of average density

between coffee plant : shading-tree is 85 : 15. The

data means that the ability of shading-tree on carbon

fixation and carbon stock is larger than coffee plant.

The result also confirmed that the biomass of

polyculture shading-tree is larger than monoculture

shading-tree with main species is L. leucocephala.

Therefore, selection of shading-tree species is a key

on carbon mitigation in order to coffee garden.

In Latin America, coffee agroforests have

counted a 5-year-old shaded-coffee garden with two

common tree species could take up 5.3 ton ha

-1

Subsequently, above ground C stocks of coffee

gardens with plain shade at Costa Rica are counted

around 11 ton per ha (Oelbermann et al., 2004). The

ability of coffee agroforest to maintain carbon

storability can reach 100 tons/ha and the ability can

still be improved if the shading plant is more varied

tree species (Hairiah, 2010).

The capacity of coffee crop of Gayo plateau in

storing C is similar to previous studies in others

tropical areas that the potential C sequestration rates

for smallholder, sustainable agroforest systems

range between 1.5 to 3.5 ton C/ha/year, or 2.1 billion

ton/year globally. An estimation of each hectare of

sustainable tropical agroforest could potentially

equal of 5 to 20 ha of forest loss (Cacho et al., 2003,

Hergoualc’h et al., 2012).

4 CONCLUSIONS

Tree-based land-use systems, such as the shade-

grown coffee agro ecosystems particularly in

polyculture of shading-tress in Gayo plateau could

sequester CO

from the air and store it in their

biomass. Based on this study, the annual C stock

increments of coffee garden was an average of 1.72

ton C/ha/years, with a standard deviation of 0.41.

Simultaneously, these coffee agro-ecosystems

provide additional services and products to local

residents and reduce pressure on existing forests.

Therefore, increasing of tree in coffee crops should

be a suitable option for climate change mitigation

that also provides ecological, economic and social

benefits.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The financial support received from Conservation

International Indonesia. I am also grateful to Head

Office of Central Aceh Forestry and Estate Crop,

Syahrial and his staff, mainly Inayat Syah Putra and

Apriansyah for discussion and guidance during

Assesment of Carbon Storage for a Conversion Landscape from Forest to Coffee Garden in Gayo Plateau to Mitigate Climate Change

fieldwork. Thanks to local people in both Central

Aceh and Bener Meriah for their help during the

survey

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