| Forest plays a considerably important role in the global ecosystem which constitutes the main part of terrestrial ecosystem. As an important renewable resource, forest brings us tremendous direct economic benefits, while creating even greater ecological service value. Since1997, the assessment of forest’s ecological service value has been one of the hotspot issues in the fields of both forest ecology and forestry economics. Among the numerous tools for assessing forest’s various benefits, the value-scale method is a crucial one. Due to the fact that value-scale method is very subjective, many indirect values can not be counted into the market, as well as the caused divergent assessing results, the value-scale method is not widely accepted.The carbon sink benefit is one of the most important benefits among forest’s many ecological benefits. In this study, the author will apply the ecological footprint method into the assessment of the forest’s carbon sink benefit which allows us to assess the land with the criterion of the land’s sustainable development. Based on the previous research results in this field, this study will calculate the carbon footprints of the fossil energy in different provinces as well as their ecological occupation and forest carbon sink, which will help build the market between fossil energy and forest carbon sink on basis of the evaluated ecological surplus or deficit. Not only does this study explore the ways of researching on current forest carbon sink, but also provides a reference for the construction of China’s carbon sink market.On the basis of previous researches, this paper conducts a systematic analysis and research on forest’s benefits of providing fossil energy. Theoretically, this paper improves the ecological footprint method. It takes forest’s carbon sink benefit as its ecological carrying capacity. Realistically, this research calculates the fossil energy consumption, forest carbon sink and carbon emission land for fossil energy in different provinces based on Jingyun Fang’s achievement, that is, calculated with30%of the total carbon dioxide absorbed by vegetation. Some conclusions can be drawn:first, in China, fossil energy takes a high proportion in total energy consumption, and there are huge differences of fossil energy consumption among provinces. Second, as forest area and forest coverage in China are constantly growing, forest accumulation and biomass need to be increased as well. Third, among all six ecological land occupations, fossil energy occupation is the most serious one, also the crucial part of ecological footprint. And among the terrestrial vegetation, forest has the strongest carbon sink capacity of all, which carries90%of the ecological capacity of all the vegetation. Fourth, taking only the carbon emissions of fossil energy into consideration, the average fossil energy occupation and supply are kept in balance over the country, but among provinces the average fossil energy ecological footprints differ from each other. Fifth, social development varies in areas with different distribution of fossil energy consumption and forest resources. Sixth, forest has a high value of carbon sink, and the study on fossil energy footprint contributes to the development of carbon market.Above all, this dissertation is theoretically creative, which takes forest carbon sink benefit as an important ecological capacity when evaluating forest’s ecological value. By adopting the ecological footprint method, the relationship between social economic development and eco-environment is better understood from a scientific perspective, and a more reasonable plan could be make in practice. Moreover, it has great significance in understanding forest carbon sink benefits, thus improving the status of forestry. |
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