• Energy Research

Abstract. Boreal fires have immediate effects on regional carbon budgets by emitting CO2 into the atmosphere at the time of burning, but also have legacy effects by initiating a long-term carbon sink during post-fire vegetation recovery. Quantifying these different effects on the current-day pan-boreal (44–84° N) carbon balance and relative contributions of legacy sinks by past fires is important for understanding and predicting the carbon dynamics in this region. Here we used the global dynamic vegetation model ORCHIDEE-SPITFIRE to attribute the contributions by fires in different decades of 1850–2009 to the carbon balance of 2000–2009, taking into account the atmospheric CO2 change and climate change since 1850. The fire module of ORCHIDEE-SPITFIRE was turned off in each decade sequentially, and turned on before and after, to model the legacy carbon trajectory by fires in each past decade. We found that, unsurprisingly, fires that occured in 2000–2009 are a carbon source (−0.17 Pg C yr−1) for the 2000s-decade carbon balance, whereas fires in all decades before 2000 contribute carbon sinks with a collective contribution of 0.23 Pg C yr−1. This leaves a net fire sink effect of 0.06 Pg C yr−1, or 6.3 % of the simulated regional carbon sink (0.95 Pg C yr−1). Further, fires with an age of 10–40 years (i.e. those occurred during 1960–1999) contribute more than half of the total sink effect of fires. The small net sink effect of fires indicates that current-day fire emissions are roughly in balance with legacy sinks. The future role of fires in the regional carbon balance remains uncertain and will depend on whether changes in fires and associated carbon emissions will exceed the enhanced sink effects of previous fires, both being strongly affected by global change.

Abstract Resolving regional carbon budgets is critical for informing land-based mitigation policy. For nine regions covering nearly the whole globe, we collected inventory estimates of carbon-stock changes complemented by satellite estimates of biomass changes where inventory data are missing. The net land–atmospheric carbon exchange (NEE) was calculated by taking the sum of the carbon-stock change and lateral carbon fluxes from crop and wood trade, and riverine-carbon export to the ocean. Summing up NEE from all regions, we obtained a global ‘bottom-up’ NEE for net land anthropogenic CO2 uptake of –2.2 ± 0.6 PgC yr−1 consistent with the independent top-down NEE from the global atmospheric carbon budget during 2000–2009. This estimate is so far the most comprehensive global bottom-up carbon budget accounting, which set up an important milestone for global carbon-cycle studies. By decomposing NEE into component fluxes, we found that global soil heterotrophic respiration amounts to a source of CO2 of 39 PgC yr−1 with an interquartile of 33–46 PgC yr−1—a much smaller portion of net primary productivity than previously reported.

Abstract. Boreal fires have immediate effects on regional carbon budgets by emitting CO2 into the atmosphere at the time of burning, but they also have legacy effects by initiating a long-term carbon sink during post-fire vegetation recovery. Quantifying these different effects on the current-day pan-boreal (44–84° N) carbon balance and quantifying relative contributions of legacy sinks by past fires is important for understanding and predicting the carbon dynamics in this region. Here we used the global dynamic vegetation model ORCHIDEE–SPITFIRE (Organising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic Ecosystems – SPread and InTensity of FIRE) to attribute the contributions by fires in different decades between 1850 and 2009 to the carbon balance of 2000–2009, taking into account the atmospheric CO2 change and climate change since 1850. The fire module of ORCHIDEE–SPITFIRE was turned off for each decade in turn and was also turned off before and after the decade in question in order to model the legacy carbon trajectory by fires in each past decade. We found that, unsurprisingly, fires that occurred in 2000–2009 are a carbon source (−0.17 Pg C yr−1) for the carbon balance of 2000–2009, whereas fires in all decades before 2000 contribute carbon sinks with a collective contribution of 0.23 Pg C yr−1. This leaves a net fire sink effect of 0.06 Pg C yr−1, or 6.3 % of the simulated regional carbon sink (0.95 Pg C yr−1). Further, fires with an age of 10–40 years (i.e., those that occurred during 1960–1999) contribute more than half of the total sink effect of fires. The small net sink effect of fires indicates that current-day fire emissions are roughly balanced out by legacy sinks. The future role of fires in the regional carbon balance remains uncertain and will depend on whether changes in fires and associated carbon emissions will exceed the enhanced sink effects of previous fires, both being strongly affected by global change.

Abstract Over the past three decades, China has experienced the largest volumes of urban growth worldwide accompanied by a continued increase in rural built-up areas mainly due to the Hukou system (mainland China’s household registration system, separating urban and rural residents) [1][2], with an average annual increase of 3.23% in urban and 2.73% in rural built-up areas. Since China is much rich in biodiversity and has numerous species under threat, both urban and rural built-up land expansion may exacerbate the threats. Risks to biodiversity caused by urban-rural expansion, are crucial for human development and environmental sustainability, but less well explored. Here we investigate what extent urban and rural built-up land expansion contributed to habitat losses of endangered species. We estimate that from 1990 to 2020, urban and rural built-up land expansion induced 2% and 5% of habitat losses on average for each endangered species, and threatened 70% and 82% of endangered species, respectively. Rural built-up land expansion induced more losses of habitats with higher endangered species richness compared with urban expansion. The high-threat habitat areas caused by rural built-up land expansion were 2.5 times as large as those of urban expansion, and about 82% of endangered species were mainly threatened by rural built-up land expansion. Most of them were concentrated in central and south China, one of 25 biodiversity hot spots worldwide. Abolishment of the Hukou system accompanied by more policy arrangements for sustainable development can mitigate urban-rural inequalities. In this scenario, an average of about 647 km2/year would be released from fulfilling the need of built-up area, thus remaining as habitat for biodiversity. Our findings help to provide important insights for biodiversity preservation in the countries with urbanization or rural built-up land expansion, and inform local policy makers in their assessment of prioritization of future ecological sustainability.