Abstract
There is growing concern about the consequences of future urban expansion on carbon storage as our planet experiences rapid urbanization. While an increasing body of literature was focused on quantifying the carbon storage impact of future urban expansion across the globe, rare attempts were made from the comparative perspective on the same scale, particularly in Central Asia. In this study, Central Asian capitals, namely Ashkhabad, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Nur Sultan, and Tashkent, were used as cases. According to the potential impacts of BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) on urban expansion, baseline development scenario (BDS), cropland protection scenario (CPS), and ecological protection scenario (EPS) were defined. We then simulated the carbon storage impacts of urban expansion from 2019 to 2029 by using Google Earth Engine, the Future Land Use Simulation model, and the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs model. We further explored the drivers for carbon storage impacts of future urban expansion in five capitals. The results reveal that Nur Sultan will experience carbon storage growth from 2019 to 2029 under all scenarios, while Ashkhabad, Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent will show a decreasing tendency. EPS and CPS will preserve the most carbon storage for Nur Sultan and the other four cities, respectively. The negative impact of future urban expansion on carbon storage will be evident in Ashkhabad, Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent, which will be relatively inapparent in Nur Sultan. The potential drivers for carbon storage consequences of future urban expansion include agricultural development in Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent, desert city development in Ashkhabad, and prioritized development of the central city and green development in Nur Sultan. We suggest that future urban development strategies for five capitals should be on the basis of differentiated characteristics and drivers for the carbon storage impacts of future urban expansion.
Highlights
Since the late 19th century, the earth witnessed climate change with a warming rate of 0.17 ◦C per decade as greenhouse gas continued to increase [1,2]
In Nur Sultan, grassland will be vulnerable to urban expansion, with 5.88% of its coverage being transformed to built-up land; in other capitals, cropland and unused land will be the primary sources converted to built-up land
Simulating the impacts of urban expansion on carbon storage was widely conducted across the globe
Summary
Since the late 19th century, the earth witnessed climate change with a warming rate of 0.17 ◦C per decade as greenhouse gas continued to increase [1,2]. As climate change becomes a primary contemporary global concern, carbon storage is increasingly perceived as an essential ecosystem service to address this issue [3,4,5]. Carbon storage indicates the capacity of the terrestrial ecosystem to remove atmospheric CO2. It was estimated that soil organic carbon, one of the carbon pools, could offset 5–15% of the global fossil-fuel emissions [6]. The enhancement of carbon storage is endowed with economic benefits since the Kyoto Protocol proposed assigning credits for carbon sequestration in forestry and agricultural soils [7]. There is growing attention on carbon storage change across the world [8], given the predicted climate change in the coming decades [9]
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