The global carbon sink potential of terrestrial vegetation can be increased substantially by optimal land management
Date
2022-01-18
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Springer Nature
Abstract
Excessive emissions of greenhouse gases â 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. Terrestrial vegetation sequesters 112â169 PgC (1PgCâ=â1015g carbon) each year, which plays a vital role in global carbon recycling. Vegetation carbon sequestration varies under different land management practices. Here we propose an integrated method to assess how much more carbon can be sequestered by vegetation if optimal land management practices get implemented. The proposed method combines remotely sensed time-series of net primary productivity datasets, segmented landscape-vegetation-soil zones, and distance-constrained zonal analysis. 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 finding suggests optimizing land management is a promising way to mitigate climate changes.
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© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the articleâs Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the articleâs Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Communications Earth & Environment, 2022, available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00333-1 . Keywords: environmental impact; sustainability.
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Citation
Sha, Z., Bai, Y., Li, R. et al. The global carbon sink potential of terrestrial vegetation can be increased substantially by optimal land management. Commun Earth Environ 3, 8 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00333-1