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Ecological sustainability assessment of the carbon footprint in Fujian Province, southeast China

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Abstract

China’s rapid economic development has initiated the deterioration of its ecological environment, posing a threat to the sustainable development of human society. As a result, an assessment of regional sustainability is critical. This paper researches China’s most forested province, Fujian Province, as the study area. We proposed a grid-based approach to assess the regional carbon footprint in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) carbon emission guidelines. Our method of assessment also introduced carbon emission indicators with our improved and published Net Primary Production (NPP) based on process simulation. The carbon footprint in Fujian Province from 2005–2017 was calculated and examined from a spatiotemporal perspective. Ecological indicators were used in the sustainability assessment. The research draws the following conclusions: 1) the carbon footprint in the eastern regions of Fujian Province was higher due to rapid economic development; 2) that of the western regions was lower; 3) an uptrend in the carbon footprint of Fujian Province was observed. All five ecological indicators based on carbon emissions and economic and social data showed an ecologically unsustainable trend over 13 years in the research area due to unsustainable economic development. Therefore, it is urgent to balance the relationship between economic development and environmental protection. Our research provides scientific references for achieving ecological civilization and sustainability in a similar region.

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Acknowledgements

This research received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41601562), also sponsored by China Scholarship Council (No. 201806655014), the Research Project for Young Teachers of Fujian Province (No. JAT160085), and the Scientific Research Foundation of Fuzhou University (No. XRC-1536).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing of Soil Erosion and Disaster Protection/College of Environment and Resource, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350116, China

    Jingyu Zeng, Rongrong Zhang, Jia Tang, Jingchen Liang, Yue Zeng, Yefan Li, Wei Shui & Qianfeng Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Spatial Data Mining & Information Sharing, Ministry of Education of China, Fuzhou, 350116, China

    Jingyu Zeng, Rongrong Zhang, Jia Tang, Jingchen Liang, Yue Zeng, Yefan Li, Wei Shui & Qianfeng Wang

  3. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20740, USA

    Qianfeng Wang

  4. Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100094, China

    Qing Zhang

  5. College of Geography and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, 241000, China

    Jinghan Li

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  1. Jingyu Zeng
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  2. Rongrong Zhang
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  8. Qing Zhang
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  9. Wei Shui
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  10. Qianfeng Wang
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Correspondence to Qianfeng Wang.

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Zeng, J., Zhang, R., Tang, J. et al. Ecological sustainability assessment of the carbon footprint in Fujian Province, southeast China. Front. Earth Sci. 15, 12–22 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-020-0815-3

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