Impact of land use change on regional carbon sink capacity: Evidence from Sanmenxia, China

Abstract

Regional carbon sink fluctuations are largely influenced by land use. To enhance regional carbon sink and inform sustainable land management practices, it is critical to elucidate the influence of land use changes on carbon sink dynamics. Employing historical data on carbon sink in Sanmenxia region, this study analyzed alterations in land use and carbon sink between 2000 and 2020. The Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) model was used to predict the impacts of land use type changes on regional carbon sink under three development scenarios (urban priority, cultivated land priority, and ecological priority).The result shows that:(1) From 2000 to 2020, cultivated land (with an increase of 3.26%) and construction land (with an increase of 22.85%) showed the most significant changes, with the main source of increase being grassland, while other land types showed little change. The southern part of the study area was mainly forest land and grassland, with higher carbon sink value than the northern part. (2) The simulation study of the three scenarios found that the development scenarios of ecological priority and cultivated land priority would be conducive to improving regional carbon sink value by 2040. Specifically, regional cropland, forest, and grassland were preserved due to the ecological red line and the restriction of basic farmland. This would increase the carbon sink value of the study area by 145 thousand tons and 171 thousand tons, respectively, compared with 2020. (3) The prediction results of the three development scenarios all showed that the carbon sink of the study area would decline first and then increase from 2020 to 2040. The carbon sink of the urban priority scenario would reach the lowest value in 2030, and the other development scenarios would reach the lowest value around 2028, and then increase significantly.