Ecological sustainability assessment of the carbon footprint in Fujian Province, southeast China
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Ecological sustainability assessment of the carbon footprint in Fujian Province, southeast China Jingyu ZENG1,2, Rongrong ZHANG1,2, Jia TANG1,2, Jingchen LIANG1,2, Jinghan LI5, Yue ZENG1,2, Yefan LI1,2, Qing ZHANG4, Wei SHUI1,2, Qianfeng WANG (✉)1,2,3
1 Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing of Soil Erosion and Disaster Protection/College of Environment and Resource, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350116, China 2 Key Laboratory of Spatial Data Mining & Information Sharing (Ministry of Education of China), Fuzhou 350116, China 3 Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA 4 Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China 5 College of Geography and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
© Higher Education Press 2020
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.
Received November 27, 2019; accepted January 21, 2020 E-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Fujian Province, carbon emission, carbon footprint, ecological index, sustainable development
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Introduction
Sustainability assessment is a valuable method for resolving global environmental and ecological issues, such as forest vegetation protection, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and sustainable development, all of which involve environmental, economic, political, and diplomatic actions (Qi and Dong, 2004; Wang et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2015a; Wang et a
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