Assessing the impacts of wetland degradation on carbon sequestration in nakivubo wetland in Uganda.

Abstract

High population growth and poor policy implementations has escalated the rate at which Nakivubo wetland is being converted into development projects, which leads to emission of enormous amounts of carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere hence, affecting the local temperatures of Kampala and other deleterious consequences of climate change. (Lal, 2004; Foster et al., 2012). Previous studies have looked at the drivers of wetland degradation without considering their magnificent impacts on carbon sequestration. Therefore, there is insufficient research on the effects of Nakivubo wetland degradation with regards to the resilience of the wetland to sequester carbon. Wetlands are effective in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, and hence mitigation of climate changes. This study was therefore set out to assess the level of carbon sequestered by Nakivubo wetland. The results showed that the percentages of carbon in the degraded parts of the wetland were much less than those intact parts of the wetlands. This implied that activities that degrade the wet land emit a lot carbon dioxide into the atmosphere leading to global warming. It is hence recommended to keep the wetlands intact because they act as great carbon sinks and have the capacity to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change, as they play a significant role in reducing the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by sequestering a substantial amount of Carbon into organic matter.