| Since the industrial revolution, with the rapid expansion of cities and high-speed growth of population, a large number of human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and frequent land-use conversion activities cause excessive accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, resulting in the breaking of carbon and oxygen balance maintained by forest, wetland ecosystems, and causing global warming and other environmental problems. Faced with this global problem, governments have reached a consensus on reduce carbon emissions and develop low-carbon economy, and proposed carbon emission reduction measures from the technical means, economic means and public policy.Based on the core of "the relationship between human land-use activities and regional carbon and oxygen cycle", this paper analyzes in-depth the carbon, carbon sink effect of human activities and ecological land in the carbon-oxygen cycle, then explores effective way to promote regional carbon oxygen balance from a public policy perspective of land use regulation. This paper argues that:(1) China is still in the period of rapid urbanization, compared with substantial carbon reduction, the low-carbon development path that offsets the carbon emission targets by increasing carbon sinks is provided with lower economic costs and feasibility.(2) Due to the spatial spillover feature of ecological functions, There is a frequent exchange of ecological functions between different regions, so regional carbon and oxygen balance is a relative rather than absolute balance. Therefore, regional differential carbon reduction and sink enhancement goals can be set according to economic development stage and ecological resources endowment in each region, hoping to abate the impact of human activities on the carbon and oxygen cycle under the premise of maintaining the region’s overall economic growth rate, and restore the carbon and oxygen balance as soon as possible.Thus, the paper constructs a regional carbon and oxygen balance evaluation model, taking the Wuhan city circle as study case, the balance between carbon release and oxygen consumption caused by human activities and carbon sequestration and oxygen release produced by ecological land is evaluated in the 9 regions from 2000 to 2013, and the main factors that influence carbon emissions are analyzed; On this basis, taking 2013 as the base year and 2020 as the target year, this paper analyzes the feasibility of achieving the overall carbon and oxygen balance in Wuhan city circle in 2020 by optimizing land use structure. Research indicates that:(1) Carbon release and oxygen consumption in Wuhan city circle shows a upward trend. The amount of carbon release rises from 37.19 million tons to 113.13 million tons, oxygen consumption increase from 93.28 million tons to 279.89 million tons during the study period, over the same period the total amount of carbon sequestration and oxygen release produced by ecological land has been declining. The overall carbon and oxygen balance gradually approaching border, and there is significant difference in each region of their carbon release and oxygen consumption: the carbon balance or oxygen balance is broken through gradually in Wuhan, Huangshi and Ezhou, other regions are still capable of maintaining the balance of carbon or oxygen balance, there is significant difference in carbon sink function between regions.(2) Land use change, particularly an increase in construction land, economic development and population size are factors to promote carbon emissions, they led to a total of 178.95 million tons carbon emissions from 2000 to 2013, the contribution rate is 25.64%, 73.18% and 1.18% respectively; Optimizing energy structure and improving energy efficiency have inhibition on carbon emissions, they are contributing 47.38% and 52.62% of the carbon emission reductions respectively, the total amount reaches 103.01 million tons during 13 years.(3) Multi-objective linear programming model calculation results show that: If want to achieve the double objective of best economic and carbon and oxygen balance in Wuhan city circle, construction land need to reduce 57472 hectares, standard ecological land need to increase 179155 hectares in 2020 in terms of 2013. The amount of carbon sequestration and oxygen release will increase by 1.53 million tons and 4.05 million tons respectively compared with 2013. Ecological benefits will increase 2.571 billion yuan, but the economic benefits will decrease 13.55 billion yuan, therefore, comprehensive benefits will decline.(4) In order to balance the relationship between ecological and economic benefits, referring to multi-objective model operation results, the land use structure-control target is decomposed to the zones combined with the main functional area planning. Among them, the district is divided into carbon balance area, the total amount of carbon-controlled area, carbon sequestration area and optimization of low-carbon area, regional divergent land-use regulations aim to increase carbon sinks and reduce carbon emission are proposed based on land use activities. |
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