Abstract
Increasing forest vegetation is important for carbon dynamics and to maintain the ecological and environmental balance in China. However, there is little understanding of how socioeconomic factors affect forest biomass carbon storage (FBCS). Here, we used continuous functions for biomass expansion factors and China’s seven completed forest inventories to estimate the changes in FBCS for 31 provinces in mainland China between 1977 and 2013. We developed a model that decomposes the contribution of the different socioeconomic factors driving FBCS. We found China’s FBCS increased from 4972 TgC (1 Tg = 1012g) in 1977–1981 to 7435 TgC in 2009–2013, with a mean growth of 77 TgC/a, and the average forest carbon density increased from 36.0 to 38.9Mg/ha (1 Mg = 106g), mainly due to the arbor forest contribution. Among the seven regions in China, the southwestern region currently accounts for the highest proportion (37.3%) of national FBCS, followed by northeastern (19.7%), northern (12.5%) and eastern region (10.8%). The main socio-economic factors affecting FBCS were forest land dependence, industrial structure and economic development level. Optimizing forest type and age structure, improving forest productivity, and strengthening forest management are feasible options to further increase China’s FBCS.
Highlights
Forests contain the majority of the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems [1] and play a crucial role in mitigating global climate change
Our methods only estimated the aboveground biomass of living tress, this component is thought to account for 76–90% of total carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems [3,28]
Apart from the inventory period 1984–1988 and 1994–1998, the average annual carbon sink growth was above 100 TgC/a
Summary
Forests contain the majority of the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems [1] and play a crucial role in mitigating global climate change. Above-ground biomass substantially determines the carbon storage potential of forest ecosystems. There has been considerable research on the calculation of forest biomass carbon storage (FBCS; reviewed in Woodbury et al [3] estimating carbon stocks and sequestration rates in U.S forests from 1990 to 2005, Pan et al [4] estimating a global forest sink of carbon for 1990 to 2007, etc.). Terrestrial carbon stocks are difficult to measure and estimate accurately because of variability among vegetation types and the complexity associated with soil storage [5]. Improved estimation of FBCS is required to clarify the role of forests in carbon dynamics at national scales
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