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Primary estimation of Chinese terrestrial carbon sequestration during 2001–2010

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  • Earth Sciences
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Abstract

Quantifying the carbon budgets of terrestrial ecosystems is the foundation on which to understand the role of these ecosystems as carbon sinks and to mitigate global climate change. Through a re-examination of the conceptual framework of ecosystem productivity and the integration of multi-source data, we assumed that the entire terrestrial ecosystems in China to be a large-scale regional biome-society system. We approximated the carbon fluxes of key natural and anthropogenic processes at a regional scale, including fluxes of emissions from reactive carbon and creature ingestion, and fluxes of emissions from anthropogenic and natural disturbances. The gross primary productivity, ecosystem respiration and net ecosystem productivity (NEP) in China were 7.78, 5.89 and 1.89 PgC a−1, respectively, during the period from 2001 to 2010. After accounting for the consumption of reactive carbon and creature ingestion (0.078 PgC a−1), fires (0.002 PgC a−1), water erosion (0.038 PgC a−1) and agricultural and forestry utilization (0.806 PgC a−1), the final carbon sink in China was about 0.966 PgC a−1; this was considered as the climate-based potential terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink for the current climate conditions in China. The carbon emissions caused by anthropogenic disturbances accounted for more than 42 % of the NEP, which indicated that humans can play an important role in increasing terrestrial carbon sequestration and mitigating global climate change. This role can be fulfilled by reducing the carbon emissions caused by human activities and by prolonging the residence time of fixed organic carbon in the large-scale regional biome-society system through the improvement of ecosystem management.

摘要

在重新审视生态系统生产力概念体系的基础上, 将中国的陆地区域假设为一个大尺度的生物-社会群区生态系统, 采用不同时空尺度多源数据的整合分析方法, 定量评估了中国区域陆地生态系统生产力及其在各种生态过程中的分配和消耗量, 进而分析评价了中国区域陆地生态系统潜在的碳源/汇强度. 统计分析结果表明中国区域的陆地生态系统具有较高的碳吸收能力, 其研究结果可以为中国区域陆地碳收支现状和增汇潜力的评估分析提供参考信息, 也可作为中国区域碳管理决策分析的重要依据.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB833504) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA05050601, XDA05050702).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Synthesis Research Center of Chinese Ecosystem Research Network, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Qiufeng Wang, Han Zheng, Xianjin Zhu & Guirui Yu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Han Zheng

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  1. Qiufeng Wang
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  2. Han Zheng
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  3. Xianjin Zhu
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  4. Guirui Yu
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Correspondence to Guirui Yu.

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SPECIAL TOPIC: Land-ocean integrated research and development of carbon sink

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Wang, Q., Zheng, H., Zhu, X. et al. Primary estimation of Chinese terrestrial carbon sequestration during 2001–2010. Sci. Bull. 60, 577–590 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-015-0736-9

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