Land-use-change induced dynamics of carbon stocks of the terrestrial ecosystem in Pakistan

Abstract

In recent years, dramatic decline of ecosystem service due to large scale human induced land use change activities, which has received much attention of researchers as diminishing of ecosystem function affects the sustainability of human society, economy and environmental protection. The study aims to analyze the impact of land use change on ecosystem service of carbon sequestration in Pakistan. This study, based on Dynamics of Land System (DLS) model, simulating the future land use changes, combing with Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model, has analyzed the changes in quantity and distribution of carbon stock in Pakistan under alternative land use scenarios for 2020 using historical land use data from 2006 to 2009. The results indicate that comparing the carbon stocks in 2009, only the Business-as-usual scenario of carbon stocks continue to decrease; the other two scenarios of carbon stocks show the increasing trend. Moreover, the Ecological protection scenario has the highest carbon storage, but it is not feasible to the current conditions of Pakistan, whereas Investment priority oriented scenario could be ideal one. The advances in research underpin scientific efforts to connect dynamic land use change with ecosystem service of carbon storage in Pakistan.