Small water bodies, such as ponds, play an important role in the global carbon cycle and serve as the significant sources of carbon emissions. However, our understanding of the carbon burial rate in ponds remains incomplete, limiting our comprehensive grasp of their contribution to carbon transport within river basins. Despite their small individual size, the collective number of ponds made them an important part of the carbon budget in ecosystems. In order to explore the burial rate of organic carbon in pond sediments and its influencing factors, this study focused on 11 ponds in Liuyin Town, Beibei District, Chongqing. We analyzed the basic physicochemical properties of the sediment in these ponds by collecting samples in July 2022. It helped us estimate the quantity of organic carbon and its burial rate in the sediments. Additionally, the study analyzed the impact of pond and basin factors on the organic carbon burial rate in pond sediments. We found that:(1) The water content of pond sediment gradually decreases from top to bottom with depth, while the dry bulk density shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. The content of total organic carbon (TOC) varied from 1.03% to 3.51%, exhibiting a gradual decline with the increasing depth. (2) The average rate of organic carbon burial was 194.60 g m^-2 a^-1, and the range was 142.76-293.32 g m^-2 a^-1. The result is one order of magnitude higher than domestic lakes and slightly higher than similar studies of other ponds. By comparing the carbon emission of ponds in the same climate region, it is found that the carbon deposition of ponds is 0.73 to 1.5 times of the total carbon emission. (3) TOC in sediment was positively correlated with total nitrogen (TN) (P<0.01), and positively correlated with the proportion of forest area in the basin (P<0.05), while negatively correlated with the proportion of dryland area (P<0.05). Organic carbon burial rate was positively correlated with the proportion of dryland area in the basin (P<0.05). The results showed that compared with large water bodies, ponds had stronger carbon storage capacity. Ponds were both carbon sources and sinks, and the organic carbon deposition of pond sediments was affected by human cultivation activities in the basin. This study helps to quantify the carbon sequestration capacity of small water bodies such as ponds, in order to provide a reference for estimating the contribution of small water bodies to the regional and global carbon cycle.