Relationship between social civilization forms and carbon emission intensity: A study of the Shanghai metropolitan area

Abstract

Historically, the classification of traditional social civilization forms on a macroscopic scale has been mainly based on religious or cultural differences, and the identification of spatial heterogeneity was not detailed. Likewise, Morris' methodology for measuring social development only considered the overall difference between the Western and the Eastern world but ignored the more detailed measurement of spatial differentiation. Additionally, the relationship between social civilization forms and carbon cycling remains uncertain. Aiming to improve these deficiencies, the goal of this article is to identify the heterogeneous social civilization forms on a metropolitan scale based on the data of land use patches and to quantify the carbon emission intensity of different social civilization forms in the Shanghai metropolitan area. The results show the following: (1) The carbon emission intensity of the industrial civilization form is 4.5 times that of the urban civilization form, 8 times that of the rural civilization form and 10 times that of the public civilization form. (2) The carbon sink capacity per unit area of the agricultural civilization form is 1.6 times that of the ecological civilization form and 17.4 times that of the wilderness form. (3) Shanghai's suburbs, especially the inner suburbs, have become a major area for carbon emissions due to the continued migration of population and industry. (4) Generally, the evolution of social civilization yields changes in the total amount and intensity of carbon emissions and carbon sinks. This study not only identifies the spatial heterogeneity of social civilization forms from the perspective of land use functional types rather than religious and cultural differences but also reveals the evolution characteristics of social civilization forms from the perspective of carbon cycle rather than cultural factors.