Contribution of Vegetation Restoration to Carbon Sequestration Driven by
Ex-situ Poverty Alleviation and Relocation in Ecologically Fragile
Areas---Taking Guizhou, China as an Case
Abstract
Vegetation restoration in ecologically fragile areas has a significant
carbon sequestration effect, and the driving factors affecting it are
complex. In particular, it is usually difficult to achieve quantitative
assessment at the regional scale for this part of human activity
intervention in the ecological environment. The Chinese government’s
ex-situ poverty alleviation and relocation project has relocated
approximately 10 million people from areas with a fragile ecological
environment to urban centralized resettlement, which is a typical case
of weakened environmental intervention by human activities. Guizhou
Province, an ecologically fragile region in southwest China, was
selected as the study area, with a relocated population of 1.92 million,
accounting for approximately 20% of the total relocated population in
China. The carbon sequestration (CS) model of vegetation photosynthesis
and spatial analysis of geographic information were used to quantify the
contribution of human activities to the natural restoration of
vegetation carbon sequestration at the regional scale caused by the
weakening of environmental interventions, based on the data of net
primary productivity (NPP) of vegetation from 2000 to 2020. The results
show that the implementation of the ex-situ poverty alleviation and
relocation project acts as an external force to drive vegetation
restoration and carbon sequestration, which increases the slope of the
carbon density change trend (from k=30.9 to k=57.41), resulting in an
overall carbon density increase of 26.51 tCkm -2. The
results of the regional spatial analysis showed that the correlation
coefficients between carbon density and relocation intensity in the
5-year and 10-year change intervals before and after relocation were
r=0.976 (p<0.01) and r=0.949 (p<0.05), respectively,
indicating a significant positive correlation between vegetation carbon
sequestration and relocation intensity. Based on this, the carbon
sequestration contribution of vegetation in 84 counties (districts) in
Guizhou Province that implemented ex-situ poverty alleviation and
relocation projects was calculated, showing that 79 counties (districts)
contributed positively, accounting for 94%. The average contribution of
carbon sequestration by vegetation restoration in each county (district)
was 0.0556 Tg, and the CO 2 emissions during the
emission reduction period were 0.2059 Tg. The other five counties
(districts) with a negative contribution to carbon sequestration were
distributed in regions with relatively stable ecosystems and mature
forests. This shows that human intervention in the environment changes
significantly in fragile ecological areas.