Background Three-North Afforestation Program(TNAP)in China is the largest ecological restoration project on Earth(ongoing from 1978 to 2050),harboring a huge area of newly planted forests,which provides a wealth of go...Background Three-North Afforestation Program(TNAP)in China is the largest ecological restoration project on Earth(ongoing from 1978 to 2050),harboring a huge area of newly planted forests,which provides a wealth of goods and ecosystem services that benefit society at levels ranging from region to East Asia.This project-induced carbon(C)sink has been expected to be large,but its size and location remain uncertain.Results In this study,we investigated the changes in the C stocks of biomass,soil C and the C accumulation ben-efited from the ecological effects in the project areas from 1978 to 2017 within the Three-North regions(4.069×10^(6)km^(2)),and evaluated its project-induced C sequestration.Using a combination of remote sensing images,field obser-vations and national forest inventory data,we estimated a total ecosystem sink of 47.06 Tg C per year(1 Tg=10^(12)g)increased by the TNAP implementation.Importantly,we first found that the C sink via the ecological effects of this project could contribute to a high proportion up to 15.94%,indicating a critical role of ecological effects in shaping the distribution of C stocks in the protective forests.This finding suggests that it is necessary to explicitly consider carbon sequestration benefited from the ecological effects when estimating C sink and parameterizing C models of the restoration projects in China and globally.Conclusions Our results update the estimates of C pools in the world’s largest ecological restoration project area,demonstrating that this project has substantially contributed to mitigating the climate change.展开更多
基金supported by grants from National Key R&D Program of China(2020YFA0608100)CAS Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences(QYZDJ-SSW-DQC027)+2 种基金National Natural Science Foundation of China(31025007)the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences(KZCX1-YW-08-02)the Consultation Project supported by Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(2019-ZW09-A-032).
文摘Background Three-North Afforestation Program(TNAP)in China is the largest ecological restoration project on Earth(ongoing from 1978 to 2050),harboring a huge area of newly planted forests,which provides a wealth of goods and ecosystem services that benefit society at levels ranging from region to East Asia.This project-induced carbon(C)sink has been expected to be large,but its size and location remain uncertain.Results In this study,we investigated the changes in the C stocks of biomass,soil C and the C accumulation ben-efited from the ecological effects in the project areas from 1978 to 2017 within the Three-North regions(4.069×10^(6)km^(2)),and evaluated its project-induced C sequestration.Using a combination of remote sensing images,field obser-vations and national forest inventory data,we estimated a total ecosystem sink of 47.06 Tg C per year(1 Tg=10^(12)g)increased by the TNAP implementation.Importantly,we first found that the C sink via the ecological effects of this project could contribute to a high proportion up to 15.94%,indicating a critical role of ecological effects in shaping the distribution of C stocks in the protective forests.This finding suggests that it is necessary to explicitly consider carbon sequestration benefited from the ecological effects when estimating C sink and parameterizing C models of the restoration projects in China and globally.Conclusions Our results update the estimates of C pools in the world’s largest ecological restoration project area,demonstrating that this project has substantially contributed to mitigating the climate change.
