plantations were observed to have larger basal area than oldgrowth
secondary forest, but had significantly lower aboveground
carbon stock than the latter. The results indicated that this was
caused by a higher mean wood specific gravity in old-growth secondary
forest stands than in the two plantation forests. These
observations suggest that wood specific gravity and stand basal
area synergized to influence aboveground carbon stock. A comparison
of our results with other studies indicated that some studies
(e.g. Ifo et al., 2014) identified a strong correlation between stem
diameter and aboveground biomass, but they did not consider
wood specific gravity as a major predictor of aboveground carbon
stock. Perhaps this arose as a result of the failure to look at the synergistic
relationship of the two variables. Other studies (e.g.
Chaturvedi et al., 2011) identified the role of the two variables in
predicting the carbon offset potential of forest stands.