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Minchao's picture

Minchao Wu

Researcher

Minchao's picture

Attributing the impacts of ecological engineering and climate change on carbon uptake in Northeastern China

Author

  • Huidong Li
  • Wanjing Gao
  • Yage Liu
  • Fenghui Yuan
  • Minchao Wu
  • Lin Meng

Summary, in English

Context: In the past decades, several ecological engineering (eco-engineering) programs have been conducted in China, leading to a significant increase in regional carbon sink. However, the contribution of different eco-engineering programs to carbon uptake is still not clear, as the location of different programs is difficult to identify, and their impacts are concurrent with climate change. Objectives: We aim to detect the location of eco-engineering programs and attribute the impacts of eco-engineering and climate change on vegetation dynamics and carbon uptake in Northeastern China during 2000–2020. Methods: We developed a new framework to detect the location of eco-engineering programs by combining a temporal pattern analysis method and Markov model, and to attribute the impacts of eco-engineering and climate change on vegetation greenness and carbon uptake by combining a neighbor contrast method within a sliding window and trend analysis on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and gross primary production (GPP). Results: We identified four main forestry eco-engineering programs: croplands to forest (CtoF), grasslands to forest (GtoF), savannas to forest (StoF), and natural forest conservation (NFC) programs, whose areas accounted for 2.11%, 1.89%, 3.41%, and 1.72% of the total study area, respectively. Both eco-engineering and climate change contributed to the increase in greenness and carbon uptake. Compared to climate change effect, eco-engineering increased NDVI and GPP by 121% and 21.43% on average, respectively. Specifically, the eco-engineering-induced increases in GPP were 54.1%, 9.46%, 8.13%, and 24.20% for CtoF, GtoF, StoF, and NFC, respectively. Conclusions: These findings highlight the important and direct contribution of eco-engineering on vegetation greening with positive effects on carbon sequestration at a fine scale, providing an important implication for eco-engineering planning and management towards a carbon-neutral future.

Department/s

  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

3945-3960

Publication/Series

Landscape Ecology

Volume

38

Issue

12

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Keywords

  • Attribution
  • Carbon uptake
  • Climate change
  • Ecological engineering
  • Northeastern China

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0921-2973