PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lu, Fei
AU  - Hu, Huifeng
AU  - Sun, Wenjuan
AU  - Zhu, Jiaojun
AU  - Liu, Guobin
AU  - Zhou, Wangming
AU  - Zhang, Quanfa
AU  - Shi, Peili
AU  - Liu, Xiuping
AU  - Wu, Xing
AU  - Zhang, Lu
AU  - Wei, Xiaohua
AU  - Dai, Limin
AU  - Zhang, Kerong
AU  - Sun, Yirong
AU  - Xue, Sha
AU  - Zhang, Wanjun
AU  - Xiong, Dingpeng
AU  - Deng, Lei
AU  - Liu, Bojie
AU  - Zhou, Li
AU  - Zhang, Chao
AU  - Zheng, Xiao
AU  - Cao, Jiansheng
AU  - Huang, Yao
AU  - He, Nianpeng
AU  - Zhou, Guoyi
AU  - Bai, Yongfei
AU  - Xie, Zongqiang
AU  - Tang, Zhiyao
AU  - Wu, Bingfang
AU  - Fang, Jingyun
AU  - Liu, Guohua
AU  - Yu, Guirui
TI  - Effects of national ecological restoration projects on carbon sequestration in China from 2001 to 2010
AID  - 10.1073/pnas.1700294115
DP  - 2018 Apr 17
TA  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
PG  - 4039--4044
VI  - 115
IP  - 16
4099  - http://www.pnas.org/content/115/16/4039.short
4100  - http://www.pnas.org/content/115/16/4039.full
SO  - Proc Natl Acad Sci USA2018 Apr 17; 115
AB  - China has launched six key ecological restoration projects since the late 1970s, but the contribution of these projects to terrestrial C sequestration remains unknown. In this study we examined the ecosystem C sink in the project area (∼16% of the country’s land area) and evaluated the project-induced C sequestration. The total annual C sink in the project area between 2001 and 2010 was estimated to be 132 Tg C per y, over half of which (74 Tg C per y, 56%) was caused by the implementation of the six projects. This finding indicates that the implementation of the ecological restoration projects in China has significantly increased ecosystem C sequestration across the country.The long-term stressful utilization of forests and grasslands has led to ecosystem degradation and C loss. Since the late 1970s China has launched six key national ecological restoration projects to protect its environment and restore degraded ecosystems. Here, we conducted a large-scale field investigation and a literature survey of biomass and soil C in China’s forest, shrubland, and grassland ecosystems across the regions where the six projects were implemented (∼16% of the country’s land area). We investigated the changes in the C stocks of these ecosystems to evaluate the contributions of the projects to the country’s C sink between 2001 and 2010. Over this decade, we estimated that the total annual C sink in the project region was 132 Tg C per y (1 Tg = 1012 g), over half of which (74 Tg C per y, 56%) was attributed to the implementation of the projects. Our results demonstrate that these restoration projects have substantially contributed to CO2 mitigation in China.