A Land Use/Land Cover Based Green Development Study for Different Functional Regions in the Jiangsu Province, China.

Xiaomin Guo,Xianjin Huang,Xiaowei Chuai

doi:10.3390/ijerph16071277

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) change can strongly affect carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. The rapid development of China’s economy has formed different functional regions. These functional regions profoundly affect land use patterns. Thus, assessing the carbon storage induced by LULC changes is significant for green development. Selecting the typical region of the Jiangsu Province as the study area, this study first examines the research associated with the regional functional characteristics and various high accuracy data and methods have been used to greatly improve the research accuracy. The results showed that from 1995 to 2015, approximately 10.26% of the entire land area had LULC type changes. Additionally, decreases in the built-up land expansion and ecological land were the main LULC change characteristics, which are mainly affected by socioeconomic development. The total carbon storage of the Jiangsu Province decreased by 714.03 × 104 t and the four regions all presented decreasing carbon storage levels. The economically developed regions presented a more obvious loss of carbon. The region with small LULC changes had a lower carbon loss. The land transfer of cultivated land to built-up land is the main transfer type causing the carbon storage loss. This study investigates the human-environmental interactions from the new perspective of functional zoning and, thus, it enriches the comparative analysis of carbon storage in functional regions and provides references for the green development of a developing country’s developed areas.

Highlights

Carbon storage and its change in terrestrial ecosystems play an important role in the carbon cycle and are the focus of global climate change [1,2]
Land use/land cover (LULC) changes can affect the soil organic carbon (SOC) by altering the organic matter that returns to the soil [4,5], changing the regional hydrothermal condition and even local microclimate; this process takes considerably longer compared to processes as vegetation carbon storage changes [6]
Apart from SOC, the basic data for the vegetation carbon density calculation were for the entirety of Jiangsu Province as a unit; the statistics on vegetation carbon density permitted no regional comparison (Table 2) and the vegetation carbon densities varied from 0.00 to 1.94 kg/m2 among the different LULC types

Summary

Introduction

Carbon storage and its change in terrestrial ecosystems play an important role in the carbon cycle and are the focus of global climate change [1,2]. Land use/land cover (LULC) change caused by human activities is the main factor influencing carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems. Through altering vegetation cover and biomass, LULC changes can directly influence the carbon storage of vegetation. LULC changes can affect the soil organic carbon (SOC) by altering the organic matter that returns to the soil [4,5], changing the regional hydrothermal condition and even local microclimate; this process takes considerably longer compared to processes as vegetation carbon storage changes [6]. Grassland degradation and conversion to cultivated land always reduces the vegetation biomass and can increase the release of

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Conclusion