Abstract
The impact of land-use/land-cover and climate changes on ecosystem productivity and carbon cycle is one of the most important issues in global change studies. In the past 20 years, the climate and land-use in China have changed significantly and have had important ecological consequences, especially in ecologically sensitive regions, e.g. the cropping-grazing transition zone (CGTZ). Here we present a study that used a process-based ecosystem model and data of land-use changes based on remote sensing and of climate change at high spatial and temporal resolution to estimate the impacts of land-use and climate changes on net primary productivity (NPP), vegetation carbon storage, soil heterotrophic respiration (HR), carbon storage and net ecosystem productivity (NEP) in the CGTZ of China. The results show that the warming and decreases in precipitation in CGTZ reduced NPP by 3.4%, increased HR by 4.3%, and reduced annual mean total NEP by 33.7Tg from the 1980s to the 1990s. Although carbon storage in vegetation and soil was increasing because the mean NPP for the period was higher than HR, the decreasing NEP indicate that climate change reduced the carbon uptake rate. However, land-use changes in this zone caused increases in NPP by 3.8%, vegetation carbon storage by 2.4%, and annual total NEP by 0.59Tg. The land-use changes enhanced ecosystem carbon uptake, but not enough to offset the negative effect of the climate change. The climate change had greater impacts than the land-use change for the whole CGTZ zone, but had smaller impacts than the land-use change in the regions where it occurred.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Printice, I. C., The carbon cycle and atmospheric carbon dioxide in climate changes 2001: The Scientific Basic (IPCC), Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 184–237.
Cox, P. M., Betts, R. A., Jones, C. D. et al., Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model, Nature, 2000, 408: 184–187.
Houghton, R. A., Hackler, J. L., Lawrence, K. T., The U.S. carbon budget: contributions from land-use change, Science, 1999, 285: 574–578.
Houghton, R. A., Skole, D. L., Nobre, C. A. et al., Annual fluxes of carbon from deforestation and regrowth in the Brazilian Ama-zon, Nature, 2000, 403: 301–304.
Caspersen, J. P., Pacala, S. W., Jenkins, J. C. et al., Contributions of land-use history to carbon accumulation in U.S. forests, Sci-ence, 2000, 290: 1148–1151.
DeFries, R. S., Past and future sensitivity of primary production to human modification of landscape, Geophysical Research Letters, 2002, 29(7): 361–364.
Defries, R. S., Bounoua, L., Collatz, G. J., Human modification of the landscape and surface climate in the next fifty years, Global Change Biology, 2002, 8: 438–458.
DeFries, R. S., Houghton, R. A., Hansen, M. C. et al., Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation and regrowth based on sat-ellite observations for the 1980s and 1990s, Global Change Biol-ogy, 2003, 99(22): 14256–14261.
Schimel, D. S., House, J. I., Hibbard, K. A. et al., Recent patterns and mechanisms of carbon exchange by terrestrial ecosystems, Nature, 2001, 414: 169–172.
IPCC Land-Use Change and Forestry: A Special Report of the IPCC, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Fang, J. Y., Chen, A. P., Peng, C. H. et al., Changes in forest bio-mass carbon storage in China between 1949 and 1998, Science, 2002, 292: 2320–2322.
Sha, W. Y., Shao, X. M., Huang, M., Climate warming and its impact on natural regional boundaries in China the 1980s, Science in China, Ser. D, 2002, 45(12): 1099–1113.
Liu, J.Y., Liu, M. L., Zhuang, D. F. et al., Study on spatial pattern of land-use change in China during 1995-2000, Science in China, Ser. D, 2003, 46(4), 373–384.
Liu, J. Y., Zhang, Z. X., Zhuang, D. F., A study on the spatial-temporal dynamic changes of land–use and driving forces analy-ses of China in the 1990s, Geographic Research (in Chinese), 2003, 22: 1–12.
Shanghai Normal University, Natural Geography of China (in Chinese), Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1982, 1–102.
Cao, M. K., Woodward, F. I., Dynamics responses of terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycling to global climate change, Nature, 1998, 393: 249–252.
Cao, M. K., Woodward, F. I., Net primary and ecosystem produc-tion and carbon stocks of terrestrial ecosystems and their re-sponses to climate change, Global Change Biology, 1998, 4: 185–198.
Cao, M. K., Prince, S., Li, K. R. et al., Response of terrestrial carbon uptake to climate interannual variability in China, Global Change Biology, 2003, 9: 536–546.
Woodward, F. I., Smith, T. M., Emanuel, W. R., A global land primary productivity and phytogeography model, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 1995, 9: 471–490.
Woodward, F. I., A global land primary productivity and phytogeography model, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 1995, 9(4): 471–490.
Givnish, T. J., Optical stomatal conductance, allocation of energy between leaves and roots and the marginal cost of transpiration: On the Economy of Plant Form and Function (ed. Givnish, T. J.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 171–213.
Lloyd, J., Farquhar, G. D., The CO2 dependence of photosynthesis, plant growth response to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration and their interaction with soil nutrient status I: General preicipals and forest ecosystems, Functional Ecology, 1996, 10: 4–32.
Li, K. R., Land-Use Change & Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Cycle of Terrestrial Ecosystem (in Chinese), Beijing: Meteorologic Press, 2002.Impacts of land-use and climate changes on ecosystem productivity and carbon cycle 1491.
Prince, S. D., Goward, S. N., Global primary production: a remote sensing approach, Journal of Biogeography, 1995, 22: 815–835.
Guo, L. B., Gifford, R. M., Soil carbon stocks and land use change: a meta analysis, Global Change Biology, 2002, 8: 345–360.
Li, K. R., Wang, S. Q., Cao, M. K., Vegetation and soil carbon storage in China, Science in China, Ser. D, 2004, 47: 49–57.
Lobell, D. B., Hicke, J. A., Asner, G. P. et al., Satellite estimates of productivity and light use efficiency in United States agriculture, 1982-98, Global Change Biology, 2002, 8: 722–735.
Braswell, B. H., Schimel, D. S., Linder, E., The response of global terrestrial ecosystems to interannual temperature variability, Sci-ence, 1997, 278: 870–873.
Schimel, D., Mellio, J. M., Tian, H. Q. et al., Contribution of in-creasing CO2 and climate to carbon storage by ecosystems in the United States, Science, 2000, 287: 2004–2006.
Tian, H. Q., Melillo, J. M., Kichlighter, D. W. et al., Effect of in-terannual climate variability on carbon storage in Amazonian ecosystems, Nature, 1998, 396: 664–667.
Lsarmiento, J., Hughes, T. M., Stouffer, R. J., Simulated response of the ocean carbon cycle to anthropogenic climate warming, Nature, 1998, 393: 245–249
Vleeshouwers, L. M., Verhagen, A., Carbon emission and seques- tration by agricultural land use: a model study for Europe, Global Change Biology, 2002, 8: 519–530.
Jones, T. H., Thompson, L. J., Lawton, J. H. et al., Impacts of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on model terrestrial ecosystems, Science, 1998, 280: 441–443.
Bousquet, P., Peylin, P., Ciais, P. et al., Regional changes in car-bon dioxide fluxes of land and oceans since 1980, Science, 2000, 290: 1342–1346.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gao, Z., Liu, J., Cao, M. et al. Impacts of land-use and climate changes on ecosystem productivity and carbon cycle in the cropping-grazing transitional zone in China. Sci. China Ser. D-Earth Sci. 48, 1479–1491 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1360/03yd0372
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1360/03yd0372