Abstract
The Grain to Green Program (GTGP) and eco-environmental emigration have been employed to alleviate poverty and control rocky desertification in the Southwest China Karst region. Carbon sequestration and oxygen production (CSOP) is used to indicate major ecological changes, because they involve complex processes of material circulation and energy flow. Using remote sensing images and weather records, the spatiotemporal variation of CSOP was analyzed in a typical karst region of northwest Guangxi, China, during 2000–2010 to determine the effects of the Chinese government’s ecological rehabilitation initiatives implemented in 1999. An increase with substantial annual change and a significant increase (20.94%, p < 0.05) in variation were found from 2000 to 2010. CSOP had a highly clustered distribution in 2010 and was correlated with precipitation and temperature (9.18% and 8.96%, respectively, p < 0.05). CSOP was significantly suppressed by human activities (p < 0.01, r = −0.102) but was consistent with the intensity of GTGP (43.80% positive). The power spectrum of CSOP was consistent with that of the gross domestic product. These results indicate that ecological services were improved by rocky desertification control in a typical karst region. The results may provide information to evaluate the efficiency of ecological reconstruction projects.
Highlights
Carbon sequestration and oxygen production (CSOP), which is an ecosystem regulation system that regulates the interaction between the terrestrial biosphere and the atmosphere, refers to the sequestration of carbon and release of oxygen by plants through photosynthesis, and is used to indicate major ecological changes that involve complex processes of material circulation and energy flow [1].Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 102; doi:10.3390/rs8020102 www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensingRemote Sens. 2016, 8, 102The Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen conferences have focused worldwide attention on the need to reduce carbon emissions [2,3]
This study evaluated the spatiotemporal variation of CSOP and its main factors in a typical karst karst region of northwest Guangxi, China
This study’s results suggest that factors affected by humans humans have important effects on the pattern of CSOP in a typical karst region, and that rocky have important effects on the pattern of CSOP in a typical karst region, and that rocky desertification desertification control measures had an important impact on the pattern of CSOP, which are control measures had an important impact on the pattern of CSOP, which are similar to previous similar to previous results for small scale vegetation in karst obtained by sampling [8,9,14,29]
Summary
Carbon sequestration and oxygen production (CSOP), which is an ecosystem regulation system that regulates the interaction between the terrestrial biosphere and the atmosphere, refers to the sequestration of carbon and release of oxygen by plants through photosynthesis, and is used to indicate major ecological changes that involve complex processes of material circulation and energy flow [1].Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 102; doi:10.3390/rs8020102 www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensingRemote Sens. 2016, 8, 102The Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen conferences have focused worldwide attention on the need to reduce carbon emissions [2,3]. Moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometry (MODIS) is widely used to monitor the spatial and temporal variation of ecosystem conditions because of its frequent and global coverage [4,5]. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is calculated as the difference between the reflectance in the red band (610–680 nm) and near infrared band (780–890 nm). NDVI is sensitive to the presence, density, and dynamics of vegetation. The MODIS NDVI product has been applied to quantify vegetation cover and green biomass. Numerous studies have noted the effects of vegetation dynamics and climatic factors on vegetation in different ecosystems [5,6], and these studies showed that vegetation conditions were positively correlated with precipitation in most relatively dry areas, but negatively correlated in relatively humid areas [7,8]
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