Integrated Land Use Change Related Carbon Source/Sink Examination in Jiangsu Province

Xiaomin Guo,Chuanglin Fang

doi:10.3390/land10121310

Abstract

Carbon emission (CE) threatens global climate change severely, leading to the continuous strengthening of the greenhouse effect. Land use changes can greatly affect the ecosystem carbon budget and anthropogenic CE. Based on the land use grids, net ecosystem productivity (NEP), energy consumption-related CE, this study employed various methods to investigate the impact of land use change on carbon balance. The results showed 10.03% of total land use area has land use type changed between 2000 and 2015. Built-up land occupied cropland was the main land use transfer type. The period with the most intense land use changes was 2005–2010, which was constant with the process of China’s urbanization. NEP presented an overall increasing trend excluding built-up land and water areas. Temporally, CE showed an increasing trend in 2000–2015, especially in the industry sector. Spatially, areas with the high energy-related CE were mainly distributed in the south, which has a relatively high economic level. The land use intensity values of cities in Jiangsu all presented an overall increasing trend, which is related to the economic development and local endowment. Cities with higher land use intensity were usually accompanied with high CE, suppressing NEP growth. From 2000 to 2015, soil carbon storage reduced by 0.15 × 108 t, vegetation carbon storage reduced by 0.04 × 108 t, and CE reached 17.42 × 108 t. Total CE caused by land use change reached 15.46 × 108 t. The findings can make references for the low-carbon development from ecological land protection, strengthen land management, and optimize urban planning.

Highlights

To alleviate the enormous damage caused by Carbon emission (CE) to global climate change, more than 100 countries have proposed carbon neutrality goals
Land is a common carrier of the “natural-social” system, and land use change has an important influence on both the carbon budget of terrestrial ecosystems [10,11,12], and anthropogenic CE [13,14,15,16,17]
Land use changes have a significant impact on the carbon storage of terrestrial ecosystems and anthropogenic CE

Summary

Introduction

To alleviate the enormous damage caused by CE to global climate change, more than 100 countries have proposed carbon neutrality goals. Vegetation, soil carbon accumulation capacity, and carbon source/sink capacity of different land use types are quite different [20]. There is a large difference in the carbon source/sink capacity between different land use intensities of the same land use type, such as a forest with a high surface biomass always has a higher carbon accumulation and carbon sink capacity than a forest with low biomass [21]. Changes in land use types and land use intensity can dramatically alter surface human activity intensity and anthropogenic CE [22,23]. Anthropogenic CE widely exists in human activities on the surface of ecological land, such as agricultural and pastoral activities that consume energy [19,25]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion