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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. Forests and the Atmosphere
Volume 6 - 2023 | doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2023.1271239
This article is part of the Research Topic

Interactions Between Forest Ecological Services and Human Activities in Coastal Cities

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Effects of climate change and land use/cover changes on carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems in the coastal area of China

Yanlin Zhen1 Xiuying Zhang2* Congguo Zhang1* Qian Gao2 Jiaqi Dong2 Liuzhen Zhang2
  • 1Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, China
  • 2International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, China

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This study evaluated the effects of climate change and land use changes on the carbon sequestration of forest ecosystems from 1991 to 2020 in the coastal area of China using a process-based global vegetation dynamic model (IBIS). The results showed that temperature had an increasing trend, with a rate of 0.02 °C yr-1; 20.00% of the forest coverage shifted spatially but there was only a 0.31% increase in total area. The carbon sequestration amounts by plants (net primary productivity, NPP) and the net carbon budget (net ecosystem productivity, NEP) in the coastal area of China in 2020 were 666.49 and 58.45 Tg C yr-1, respectively, which increased by 18.31% and 2509.30%, respectively, compared to the values in 1991. The increased forest ecosystem NPP and NEP were mainly due to climate change, while forest cover changes increased NPP by only 0.06% and NEP by 9.75% with a strong regional difference. The NPP showed a significant increasing trend, with a rate of 3.01 Tg C yr-1, which was positively correlated with temperature (0.43, p < 0.01) and precipitation (0.42, p < 0.01). However, the NEP largely varied during 1991-2020 and did not show a significant correlation with precipitation or temperature. These results provide scientific guidance for the government to enact environmental protection and low-carbon land use planning policies.

Keywords: Forest carbon sequestration, Climate Change, Land use/cover changes, IBIS model, coastal area of China

Received: 02 Sep 2023; Accepted: 25 Sep 2023.

Copyright: © 2023 Zhen, Zhang, Zhang, Gao, Dong and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Prof. Xiuying Zhang, International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
Mx. Congguo Zhang, Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, Jiaxing, 314006, Zhejiang, China