CabaKarst · Between degradation and conservation: The carbon balance of the Chinese karst ecosystem
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-11-01 → 2022-01-10
- EU contribution
- €200,195
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Between degradation and conservation: The carbon balance of the Chinese karst ecosystem
Over the past decades, the karst region of southern China has been identified as a hot spot of global tree cover increase. Ecological engineering projects have converted this area that was characterized by a high population pressure, intensive agricultural use and accelerated land degradation into a carbon sink. While the overall increase in vegetation cover is not a new finding of this project, it had not been clear how this massively increasing vegetation cover has impacted the regional and national carbon balance. It was also unclear to which extend the increase in tree cover can be attributed to ecological engineering projects, forest management types, and how population migration impacted on these land transitions. This is however important to understand, as tree plantations and the restoration of degraded landscapes are key to mitigate climate change. Here we have the unique chance to study how large scale human forest management can help to increase the carbon sink and reduce atmospheric CO2. The reason why this topic has not been studied in detail is the fact that traditional satellite data do not go beyond variables describing the greenness of the landscape. This project aimed at developing new methods and applying new data sources to study changes in carbon stocks in southern China. These carbon dynamics are then related to management, like ecological engineering, climate, human migration, and other drivers. The ability of managed forests to act as a carbon sink and mitigate climate change by offsetting CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning was further studied. We conclude that tree planting from ecological engineering and released pressure on the vegetation via rural depopulation created a large carbon sink in rural southern China. This carbon sink can offset about 1/3 of the CO2 emissions over the past decade, but we also observed saturation in tree growth, making this carbon sink a rather short term and transient solution to mitigate climate change.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Recent studies have shown a globally increasing vegetation cover, also known as the greening Earth. Elevated atmospheric CO2 has been identified as the main driver of this greening. On the contrary, human management is usually reported to cause land degradation and deforestation, especially in humid areas where population pressure is high. This project aims at challenging this simplistic view by introducing the Chinese karst regions as a study area known as one of the world’s most fragile and degraded ecosystems, but also a hot-spot of global greening hosting mega-engineering conservation projects which are the largest in human history. Here my research hypothesis is that conservation efforts in China’s karst regions offset degradation and lead to an increased carbon sequestration with global impact. I aim to (1) develop methods to assess aboveground biomass carbon (ABC) losses and gains with newest satellite data, (2) attribute ABC dynamics to conservation and degradation using inventory data, (3) test the sensitivity of ABC to climate extremes and explain how conservation efforts affect these, and (4) assess the regional and global impact of observed ABC changes as a climate change mitigation measure. Whereas the host institution is world leading in satellite based assessments of climate induced greening of global drylands, me and my project will add a new dimension to the host’s portfolio: the human induced greening of a humid zone. Moreover, the host is world leading in the application of newest satellite data for vegetation cover and ABC assessments and has direct contacts to data developers (e.g. vegetation optical depth based on low frequency passive microwave data). The combination of (a) my regional knowledge, my access to inventory data and contacts to Chinese stake-holders with (b) the host’s experience in data processing and scientific publishing will generate novel knowledge on human induced carbon sequestration as a climate change mitigation measure.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNCoordinatorDenmark
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/795970
- https://www.treesoutsideforests.com/the-carbon-sink-of-southern-china
Data: CORDIS, © European Union