Assessment of Human-Related Driving Forces for Reduced Carbon Uptake Using Neighborhood Analysis and Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study in the Grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Applied Sciences

Zongyao Sha¹  Ruren Li² 

[1] School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China;School of Transportation Engineering, Shenyang Jianzhu University, Shenyang 100168, China;

关键词: zonal analysis;    carbon sequestration;    grassland;    land management;    NPP;   

DOI  :  10.3390/app10217787

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The ever-rising concentration of atmospheric carbon is viewed as the primary cause for global warming. To discontinue this trend, it is of urgent importance to either cut down human carbon emissions or remove more carbon from the atmosphere. Grassland ecosystems occupy the largest part of the global land area but maintain a relatively low carbon sequestration flux. While numerous studies have confirmed the impacts on grassland vegetation growth from climate changes and human activities, little work has been done to understand the driving forces for a reduced carbon uptake (RCU)—a loss in vegetation carbon sequestration because of inappropriate grassland management. This work focused on assessing RCU in the grassland of Inner Mongolia and understanding the influential patterns of the selected variables (including grazing intensity, road network, population, and vegetation productivity) related to RCU. Neighborhood analysis was proposed to locate optimized grassland management practices from historical data and to map RCU. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models were applied to explore the driving forces for RCU. The results indicated that the human-related factors, including stock grazing intensity, population density, and road network were likely to present a spatially varied impact on RCU, which accounted for more than 1/4 of the total carbon sequestration.

【 授权许可】

Unknown