The spatial and temporal distribution of China’s forest carbon

Abstract

IntroductionChina’s forests have sequestrated a significant amount of carbon over the past two decades. However, it is not clear whether China’s forests will be able to continue to have as much carbon sequestration potential capacity in the future.MethodsIn order to research China’s forest carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential capacities at spatial and temporal scales, we built a digital forest model for each province of China using the data from The China Forest Resources Report (2014– 2018) and calculated the carbon storage capacity and sequestration potential capacity of each province with the current management practices without considering natural successions.ResultsThe results showed that the current forest carbon storage is 10.0 Pg C, and the carbon sequestration potential in the next 40 years (from year 2019 to 2058) will be 5.04 Pg C. Since immature forests account for the majority of current forests, the carbon sequestration capacity of the forest was also high (0.202 Pg C year−1). However, the forest carbon storage reached the maximum with the increase of stand maturity. At this time, if scenarios such as afforestation and reforestation, human and natural disturbances, and natural succession are not considered, the carbon sequestration capacity of forests will continue to decrease. After 90 years, all stands will develop into mature and over-mature forests, and the forest carbon sequestration capacity is 0.008 Pg year−1; and the carbon sequestration rate is ~4% of what it is nowadays. The change trend of forest carbon in each province is consistent with that of the country. In addition, considering the large forest coverage area in China, the differences in tree species and growing conditions, the forest carbon storage and carbon sequestration capacities among provinces were different. The growth rate of carbon density in high-latitude provinces (such as Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Inner Mongolia) was lower than that in the south (Guangdong, Guangxi, or Hunan), but the forest carbon potential was higher.DiscussionPlanning and implementing targeted forest management strategies is the key to increasing forest carbon storage and extending the service time of forest carbon sinks in provinces. In order to reach the national carbon neutrality goals, we recommend that each province have an informative strategic forest management plan.

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“…The study of carbon emissions has been a popular research area. Carbon emission studies are mainly on the national [9], provincial [10,11], urban cluster [12,13], and occasionally county [14,15] scales. For the study of carbon emission influencing factors, most of them adopt the Kaya identity [16,17], the LMDI decomposition method [18][19][20][21], the IPAT model [22], the STIRPAT model [23][24][25], the spatial econometric model [26][27][28], the geographically weighted regression model [29][30][31], Geodetector [32,33], and so on.…”

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“…The issue of global climate change caused by increasing carbon emissions has emerged as a significant challenge in the discussion surrounding global resources and ecological environments OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Guojie Wang, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China Wei et al 10.3389/fevo.2023.1185911 Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 02 frontiersin.org (IPCC, 2022;Cheng et al, 2023). The sustainable enhancement of carbon sinks has been identified as a crucial solution to address this problem and to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol.…”