Extra Climate Benefits From Afforestation Due to Reduced Forest Fragmentation in China
Source abstract
Abstract
ABSTRACT Afforestation connects isolated forests into larger contiguous forests, reducing forest fragmentation. This process decreases edge areas by transforming edge forests into new interior forests (termed transformed forests). However, the extra climate benefits from edge reductions in transformed forests, beyond those provided by the planted forests themselves, remain unclear. Here, CO 2 sequestration from increased biomass (biogeochemical effect) and emissions from decreased albedo (biophysical effect) of transformed forests in China are estimated, using multiple high‐resolution remote‐sensing datasets. The planted forest area (89.6 M ha) accounted for 35.5% of China's forest area in 2015, transforming 51.8 M ha of edge forests into interior forests. A cumulative increase of 1.4±0.2 Pg CO 2 e in the transformed forests is found, compared with a biomass increase of 10.3±0.4 Pg CO 2 e in the planted forests over ~1980–2015. These transformed forests also induce a biophysical warming effect of −0.9 Pg CO 2 e, partially offsetting the cooling effect from increased biomass. Combining both effects, transformed forests provide a net CO 2 e gain of 0.5±0.2 Pg CO 2 e, representing an extra 6.6±2.7% of the direct climate benefits from planted forests. This study reveals previously ignored extra climate benefits from reduced forest fragmentation alongside forest expansion, offering new perspectives on mitigating climate warming through afforestation.
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Research context
OpenAlex topics: Remote Sensing in Agriculture · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Department of Earth System Science Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling Institute For Global Change Studies Tsinghua University Beijing China
Ministry of Education Ecological Field Station For East Asian Migratory Birds Department of Earth System Science Tsinghua University Beijing China
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement LSCE/IPSL CEA‐CNRS‐UVSQ Université Paris‐Saclay Gif‐sur‐Yvette France
Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark
Key Laboratory for Agro‐ecological Processes in Subtropical Region Institute of Subtropical Agriculture Chinese Academy of Sciences Changsha China
State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology Research Center for Eco‐Environmental Sciences Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China
College of Urban and Environmental Sciences Peking University Beijing China
Institute of Carbon Neutrality Peking University Beijing China
Faculty of Environmental Science & Engineering Kunming University of Science & Technology Kunming China
Sino‐French Institute for Earth System Science Peking University Beijing China
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China
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