↓ Skip to main content

The Chinese Grain for Green Programme: Assessing the carbon sequestered via land reform

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of Environmental Management, May 2013
Altmetric Badge

Citations

dimensions_citation
44 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
52 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
The Chinese Grain for Green Programme: Assessing the carbon sequestered via land reform
Published in
Journal of Environmental Management, May 2013
DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.02.045
Pubmed ID
Authors

Martin Persson, Jesper Moberg, Madelene Ostwald, Jintao Xu

Abstract

The Grain for Green Programme (GGP) was launched in China in 1999 to control erosion and increase vegetation cover. Budgeted at USD 40 billion, GGP has converted over 20 million hectares of cropland and barren land into primarily tree-based plantations. Although GGP includes energy forests, only a negligible part (0.6%) is planted as such, most of the land (78%) being converted for protection. Future use of these plantations is unclear and an energy substitution hypothesis is valid. We estimate the overall carbon sequestration via GGP using official statistics and three approaches, based on i) net primary production, ii) IPCC's greenhouse gas inventory guidelines, and iii) mean annual increment. We highlight uncertainties associated with GGP and the estimates. Results indicate that crop- and barren-land conversion sequestered 222-468 Mt of carbon over GGP's first ten years, the IPCC approach yielding the highest estimate and the other two approaches yielding similar but lower estimates (approximately 250 Mt of carbon). The carbon stock in these plantation systems yields a mean of 12.3 t of carbon per hectare. Assessment uncertainties concern the use of growth curves not designed for particular species and locations, actual plantation survival rates, and discrepancies in GGP figures (e.g., area, type, and survival rate) at different authority levels (from national to local). The carbon sequestered in above- and below-ground biomass from GGP represents 14% (based on the median of the three approaches) of China's yearly (2009) carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and cement production.

Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 52 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 52 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 11 21%
Student > Master 11 21%
Student > Ph. D. Student 6 12%
Student > Doctoral Student 2 4%
Professor 2 4%
Other 9 17%
Unknown 11 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Environmental Science 12 23%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 9 17%
Social Sciences 5 10%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 2 4%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 2 4%
Other 10 19%
Unknown 12 23%