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Research Progress

China's National Key Ecological Restoration Project Brings about Carbon Sequestration Effects

Apr 17, 2018

The latest research group "Carbon Sequestration Assessment of National Key Ecological Restoration Projects", Strategic Priority Programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, in cooperation with Institutes from CAS and universities, revealed that China's national key ecological restoration projects significantly enhanced the carbon storage of the ecosystem in the project area. It promoted the carbon sink function and brought about considerable carbon sequestration effects.

Their findings have been published in PNAS in a paper entitled "Effects of national ecological restoration projects on carbon sequestration in China from 2001 to 2010". 

China has launched six key national ecological restoration projects to protect its environment and restore degraded ecosystems, recent studies have indicated that the implementation of the national ecological restoration projects has improved ecosystem services. However, the vital total carbon sequestration benefit arising from the key restoration projects has not yet been systematically evaluated.

The group conducted a large-scale field investigation and a literature survey of biomass and soil carbon in China's forest, shrubland and grassland ecosystems across the regions where the six projects were implemented (~16% of the country's land area).

They investigated the changes in the carbon stocks of these ecosystems to evaluate the contributions of the projects to the country's carbon sink between 2001 and 2010.

Over this decade, it was estimated that the carbon stock of ecosystem in the project region increased by 1.5 Pg carbon (1 Pg = 1015 g) with a total annual carbon sink of 132 Tg C/yr (1 Tg = 1012 g). This is equivalent to 50-70% of the national total annual sink from all major terrestrial ecosystems in China and could offset 9.4% of China's annual carbon emissions from fuel combustion during the 2000s.

In addition, over half of this carbon sink (74 Tg C/yr, 56%) was attributed to the implementation of the projects.

This finding indicates that the implementation of the ecological restoration projects have significantly increased ecosystem carbon sequestration across the country and have substantially contributed to CO2 mitigation in China.

Therefore, the implementation of the national key ecological restoration projects could be regarded as an important steps of China in the participation in global environmental governance and fulfilling the national commitment on the CO2 emission reduction targets. 

The research was supported by the Strategic Priority Programme of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Major Research Program of China and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS.

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