#CARBON SEQUESTRATION RATE DRIVERS#

An optimal land-management practice (OLMP) refers to an LMP that helps sequester higher, if not the highest, potential carbon from the managed vegetation given the current climatic, nonclimatic, and HUMAN conditions. Previous studies confirm that land use and management strategies have a massive effect on carbon sequestration from vegetation 18, 20, 21. Lastly, carbon sequestration can be updated by land-management practices (LMPs) 9, i.e., one LMP may result in higher or lower carbon sequestration than the other, under the same environmental contexts (the climatic and nonclimatic conditions). Second, vegetation cannot maximize carbon sequestration without favorable natural conditions such as landforms 15, soil properties 19, and biome groups 10.

#CARBON SEQUESTRATION RATE DRIVERS#

For example, the climate-driven Miami model, which has been widely applied to map large-scale NPP 10, 17, 18, highlights the climatic factors’ importance as vital drivers to carbon sequestration. The dependence of vegetation carbon sequestration on climatic factors is reflected by most NPP models 11. Lack of rainfall causes physiological stress and limits vegetation photosynthesis in most arid regions 14. Those factors can be broadly categorized as the following three groups 16: (1) climate impact (e.g., precipitation and temperature) (2) nonclimatic natural factors such as soil property, landforms, and biomes and (3) human-related (HUMAN) land-management practices.įirst, vegetation will not attain the saturation of carbon sequestration capacity without appropriate climatic conditions 10. As a key component of energy and mass transformation in terrestrial ecosystems, NPP depends on various factors, such as the supply of nutrients, water availability, soil profile characteristics, and landscape attributes (e.g., terrain and drainage) 14, 15. NPP is closely related to a carbon sink, which is equivalent to NPP minus the component of soil heterotrophic respiration 13 thus, NPP serves as a good proxy for evaluating carbon sink. The net amount of carbon captured by plants through photosynthesis over a given period is called net primary production (NPP) 11, 12. Improving vegetation carbon sequestration provides an alternative measure to counteract the excessive carbon emissions 9, 10. Vegetation dominates most terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., forests, grasslands, croplands, shrublands, and savannas) and absorbs 112–169 PgC each year from the atmosphere through a biochemical process called photosynthesis 8, 9. Though cutting fossil fuel consumption provides a direct option to reduce carbon emissions, it shows limited effect in mitigating atmospheric CO 2 because fossil energy still powers the economy in many countries 4, 9. The atmospheric CO 2 has risen beyond 400 ppm in recent years, which is attributed to carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and explains the 1.5 ☌ increase in air temperature since the 1880s 7, 8.

Unfortunately, those policy options seem not being effectively deployed, given the continuous increase of the emissions of GHGs 5, 6. Numerous policies have long been proposed to cut down GHGs emissions, including resorting to renewable energy, popularizing electric vehicles, optimizing land-use policies, as well as other GHGs cutting policies or programs 1, 4. The world is on track for more than 3 ☌ of warming by the end of the century 2, 3. Despite considerable effort internationally, many countries are likely to miss the emission control targets proposed in the Paris Agreement. Keeping the global temperature increase below 1.5 ☌ in accord with the Paris Agreement would require prompt and substantial reductions in greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions on the global scale 1. The finding suggests optimizing land management is a promising way to mitigate climate changes. We find that the global land vegetation can sequester an extra of 13.74 PgC per year if location-specific optimal land management practices are taken and half of the extra clusters in ~15% of vegetated areas. The proposed method combines remotely sensed time-series of net primary productivity datasets, segmented landscape-vegetation-soil zones, and distance-constrained zonal analysis. Here we propose an integrated method to assess how much more carbon can be sequestered by vegetation if optimal land management practices get implemented. Vegetation carbon sequestration varies under different land management practices. Terrestrial vegetation sequesters 112–169 PgC (1PgC = 10 15g carbon) each year, which plays a vital role in global carbon recycling. Excessive emissions of greenhouse gases - of which carbon dioxide is the most significant component, are regarded as the primary reason for increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming.

Carbon sequestration rate