Spatiotemporal trend of carbon storage in China's bamboo industry, 1993–2018

Abstract

To alleviate the greenhouse effect, increasing the carbon storage of forest and harvested wood products is an effective way. As one of the most important components of forest resources, bamboo plays an important role in carbon sequestration. China possesses the richest bamboo resources in the world. In this study, we developed a comprehensive carbon model including the supply chain from bamboo forest to final products to estimate the carbon pool for China's bamboo industry from 1993 to 2018. To examine the changes in carbon storage, we conducted a spatiotemporal analysis for 15 provinces employing a simple linear regression model. Additionally, a stochastic simulation was employed to test the parameter uncertainty in carbon estimation. Results show the carbon storage of China's bamboo industry has steadily improved, including both bamboo forest and products. In 2018, the carbon storage of bamboo vegetation, soil, and ground layer reached 448.30 TgC, 396.75 TgC, and 11.20 TgC, respectively. The carbon storage of bamboo products also increased gradually, with the storage and emission being 55.33 TgC and 1.70 TgC, respectively. The total carbon storage of China's bamboo industry in 2018 is 909.88 TgC. Moreover, the spatiotemporal analysis quantifies the annual change of the carbon storage for each province. It reveals the spatiotemporal change pattern of total bamboo carbon storage as similar to the bamboo forest. The provinces with more carbon storage tend to increase more rapidly per year. The bamboo industry is immensely significant for both the economy and the environment.