Contributions of ecological restoration policies to China’s land carbon balance
Chao Yue, Mengyang Xu, Philippe Ciais, Shu Tao, Huizhong Shen, Jinfeng Chang, Wei Li, Lei Deng, Junhao He, Yi Leng, L. Yu, Jiaming Wang, Can Xu, Han Zhang, Pengyi Zhang, Liankai Zhang, Jie Zhao, Lei Zhu, Shilong Piao
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 (CO2) since 1980 would have led China’s land sector to be a carbon source of 0.11 Pg C yr−1 for 2001–2020, in stark contrast to a sink of 175.9 Tg C yr−1 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 CO2 (42.2%) and climate (−14.9%). Our results underscore the potential of active land management in achieving ‘carbon-neutrality’ in China. China’s restoration policies since 1980 turned its land sector from a carbon source to a sink of 175.9 (143.8–205.8) Tg C yr–¹ (2001–2020), with over 70% of this due to land management, highlighting its role in carbon neutrality.