Contributions of ecological restoration policies to China's land carbon balance.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39521789.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-54100-9 and PMC identifier 11550817.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
Unleashing the land sector's potential for climate mitigation requires purpose-driven changes in land management. However, contributions of past management changes to the current global and regional carbon cycles remain unclear. Here, we use vegetation modelling to reveal how a portfolio of ecological restoration policies has impacted China's terrestrial carbon balance through developing counterfactual 'no-policy' scenarios. Pursuing conventional policies and assuming no changes in climate or atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) since 1980 would have led China's land sector to be a carbon source of 0.11 Pg C yr<sup>-1</sup> for 2001-2020, in stark contrast to a sink of 175.9 Tg C yr<sup>-1</sup> in reality. About 72.7% of this difference can be attributed to land management changes, including afforestation and reforestation (49.0%), reduced wood extraction (21.8%), fire prevention and suppression (1.6%) and grassland grazing exclusion (0.3%). The remaining 27.3% come from changes in atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> (42.2%) and climate (-14.9%). Our results underscore the potential of active land management in achieving 'carbon-neutrality' in China.