CARBON ACCUMULATION IN MACAÚBA PLANTS CAN BE ESTIMATED BY ALLOMETRIC EQUATIONS

International agreements in response to global climate change have generated opportunities for the trading of carbon credits, making it essential to know about the accumulation of carbon in different plant species. In the estimation of this variable in tree species, the use of allometric models that use easily measurable predictor variables is highlighted. Therefore, the present study aimed to generate allometric equations to estimate the accumulation of carbon in macaúbas cultivated in Brazil. The evaluated data were collected from seedlings with 3 and 8 months of age, cultivated in a nursery, and from palm trees with 19, 58 and 108 months, cultivated in the field, all from the state of Minas Gerais, Gerais.As variables collected in seedlings and plants in the field were age, total height, crown diameter, lowest living leaf height, total number of leaves, and number of senescent leaves. The total dry mass of seedlings and plants was obtained by destructive sampling of the above-ground (shoot) and below-ground (root-system) biomass of each individual. The accumulation of carbon in seedlings and plants in the field was determined by the carbon contents obtained by the muffle calcination method in the different plant compartments of the macaúbas, both above and below the ground, multiplied by the respective dry mass. The independent variable (x) best related to carbon accumulation in the adjusted equation was selected based on the values of the correlation coefficients (r) between the observed (y) and estimated carbon (ŷ), root mean square error error (RMSE) (absolute and percentage) and, mainly, on the consistency between the observed values and the adjusted curves