Carbon stock and sink economic values of forest ecosystem in the forest industry region of Heilongjiang Province, China

Mingjuan Li

doi:10.1007/s11676-021-01347-3

Abstract

The values of forest carbon stock (CSV) and carbon sink (COV) are important topics in the global carbon cycle. We quantitatively analyzed the factors affecting changes in both for forest ecosystem in 2000−2015. With multiple linear stepwise regression analysis, we obtained the factors that had a significant impact on changes of CSV and COV, and then the impacts of these variables on CSV and COV were used for further quantitative analysis using the vector autoregressive model. Our results indicated that both stand age and afforestation area positively affect CSV and COV; however, the forest enterprise gross output value negatively affects CSV. Stand age has the largest long-term cumulative impact on CSV and COV, reaching 40.4% and 9.8%, respectively. The impact of enterprise gross output value and afforestation area on CSV and COV is the smallest, reaching 4.0% and 0.3%, respectively.

Highlights

Climate change stimulated by emissions of CO2 has become a significant issue worldwide
The results of multiple linear stepwise regression analysis (MLR) indicated that the variables that have a significant impact on the CSV are stand age (AGE), enterprise gross output value (EGOV), and afforestation area (AA)
The variables that have a significant impact on the COV are stand age and the afforestation area

Summary

Introduction

Climate change stimulated by emissions of CO2 has become a significant issue worldwide. As the largest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems, forests play an important role in maintaining global carbon balances and in balancing global warming (Dixon et al 1994; Wingfield et al 2015; Cui et al 2018). Trees absorb CO2 and release oxygen through photosynthesis in the growth process, and the absorbed C O2 is fixed in the plant and soil in the form of biomass, making forests the most important carbon sink or carbon pool of terrestrial ecosystems. Carbon storage (i.e., the stock of carbon stored in plant biomass and soil) and sequestration (i.e., the removal of atmospheric carbon per unit of time by plants and soils) are recognized ecosystem services that contribute to climate change mitigation (Pan et al 2011; Alongi 2012; Caldeira 2012). Quantifying economic values of total carbon stocks and annual carbon sinks of forest ecosystem are required for carbon trading and forest carbon projects

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion