Most of the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches comprise natural and planted forests and trees on their premises. A study was conducted to investigate carbon stock and woody species diversity patterns along the church age gradient in Addis Ababa city. We hypothesized that the carbon stock would relate to the church age gradient. Thus, the study was conducted in forests belonging to churches that were selected in a stratified random sampling from four age categories with the year of establishments ranging from 1897 to 1993. Counting of all the woody species and DBH and height measurement of all individuals with DBH of 5 cm and above was carried out. Carbon stock and different diversity indices were computed, and the relationships between church age and tree parameters were evaluated. Results showed that the forests were characteristically small (0.6 ± 0.57 ha), and the tree species with the highest total carbon stock were Juniperus procera, Eucalyptus globulus and E. camaldulensis. The mean amount of carbon stock contained in each church forest was 156 ± 92 t ha-1. A total of 50 indigenous and 40 exotic woody species were identified. A statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) among the four Strata was revealed for the carbon stock of native trees. Correlation analysis also revealed a significant positive relationship between church age and native trees’ carbon stock. We conclude that the church forests have a very important role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, and thus scaling up the long-term maintenance and management of such small-sized forests in urban green spaces is vital.

中文翻译：

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埃塞俄比亚亚的斯亚贝巴沿教堂年龄梯度的教堂森林碳储量和木本物种多样性格局

埃塞俄比亚的大多数东正教教堂在其房屋中都包含天然和人工林木。进行了一项研究，调查了亚的斯亚贝巴市沿教堂年龄梯度的碳储量和木本物种多样性模式。我们假设碳储量与教会年龄梯度有关。因此，这项研究是在属于教会的森林中进行的，该森林是从四个年龄类别中分层抽取的，这些年份的成立时间为1897年至1993年。所有木本物种和DBH的计数以及所有患有DBH的个体的身高测量进行5cm及以上。计算碳储量和不同的多样性指数，并评估教堂年龄和树木参数之间的关系。结果表明，森林的特征是较小（0.6±0。刺柏，桉树和E. camaldulensis。每个教堂森林中的平均碳储量为156±92 t ha-1。总共确定了50种土著和40种外来木本物种。 在四个层次中，天然树木的碳储量显示出统计学上的显着差异（p <0.05）。相关分析还显示，教堂年龄与当地树木的碳储量之间存在显着的正相关关系。我们得出的结论是，教堂森林在固碳和生物多样性保护方面发挥着非常重要的作用，因此，扩大城市绿地中这类小型森林的长期维护和管理至关重要。