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Estimation of China’s terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink: Methods, progress and prospects

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Abstract

China announced its national goal to reach the peak of carbon emission by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, during the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2020. In this context, the potential of the carbon sink in China’s terrestrial ecosystems to mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions has attracted unprecedented attention from scientific communities, policy makers and the public. Here, we reviewed the assessments on China’s terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink, with focus on the principles, frameworks and methods of terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink estimates, as well as the recent progress and existing problems. Looking forward, we identified critical issues for improving the accuracy and precision of China’s terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink, in order to serve the more realistic policy making in pathways to achieve carbon neutrality for China.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Yongwen LIU and Dr. Yilong WANG for their help in the writing process. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41988101) and National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFA0607304).

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  1. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Shilong Piao, Yue He & Xuhui Wang

  2. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Shilong Piao & Fahu Chen

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Correspondence to Shilong Piao.

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Piao, S., He, Y., Wang, X. et al. Estimation of China’s terrestrial ecosystem carbon sink: Methods, progress and prospects. Sci. China Earth Sci. 65, 641–651 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-021-9892-6

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