Ecological Restoration and Carbon Sequestration Regulation of Mining Areas—A Case Study of Huangshi City

Abstract

As an important carbon sink indicator, the vegetation net primary productivity (NPP) is key and helpful for understanding regional carbon sequestration and storage of mining areas. Systematic analysis of NPP of the ecological reconstruction process in mining areas can effectively contribute to local governments and related departments for making ecological decisions under the “double carbon goals” (“peak of carbon release” and “carbon neutrality”) and help to promote regional sustainable development. In this study, we used the CASA model to systematically assess the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of NPP of Huangshi City from 1990 to 2018. Meanwhile, various scenarios were set up to study the effects of climate factors, landscape pattern evolution, and ecological restoration on regional carbon storage. Our results documented that (1) NPP of the study area an increasing trend from 1990–2018 shows and exhibits significant spatial heterogeneity; (2) the significant increase of NPP was mainly in the restored mining areas, indicating that the ecological restoration of mining areas can effectively improve the regional carbon sequestration capacity; (3) from 1990 to 2018, climate change released 0.136 TgC, while landscape pattern change contributed to carbon storage with 0.266 TgC; and (4) the restoration and reconstruction of vegetation in the mining areas is an important way to achieve carbon neutrality of Huangshi City in the future, and the changes of NPP varied among different ecological restoration modes.

Study on Ecological Loss in Coal Mining Area Based on Net Primary Productivity of Vegetation

“…where FPAR(x,t) NDVI and FPAR(x,t) SR are FPAR calculated from NDVI (see Equation( 4)) and SR (see Equation( 5)) at pixel x and month t, respectively [6].…”

“…where NDVI i,max and NDVI i,min are the maximum and minimum values of NDVI for the vegetation type i; the maximum and minimum values of FPAR were 0.950 (FPAR max ) and 0.001 (FPAR min ), respectively. SR i,max and SR i,min are the 5% and 95% lower percentile of NDVI for the vegetation type i, SR(x,t) is the ratio of NDVI for month t of x pixels [46], calculated according to Equation (6).…”

“…The environmental issue of climate change is extremely important to the development of human society. Hence, with the reduction in carbon emissions and the improvement of carbon sinks, it has become a consensus to slow down the rate of global warming [6] The Chinese government strives to achieve carbon peaking in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. Increasing the vegetation carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems is an important way to achieve this goal, and it is also an important part of current global changes [7].…”

“…Wu et al, demonstrated that the carbon stocks in mining areas are mainly affected by the mining activities, and excessive mining activity will destroy the arable land and ecological environment in mining areas, thus decreasing carbon stocks, while land reclamation improves land productivity and increases carbon stocks [31]. Liao et al analyzed the net primary productivity (NPP) of vegetation in the process of ecological reconstruction of the mining area and found that the restored mining area can effectively improve the regional carbon sink capacity [6]. Some studies (e.g., Chen et al; Ahirwal et al) mainly focused on carbon stock estimation and spatial distribution variability [32,33], but there is a lack of systematic analysis of NPP changes in mining activity and ecological reconstruction.…”

Dynamic simulation of land use and land cover and its effect on carbon storage in the Nanjing metropolitan circle under different development scenarios

“…Rapid ED and intensive land development have decreased the carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems and destroyed local ecological environments, which further contributes to climate warming (Zhu et al, 2021;Tian et al, 2022b). Therefore, there is a need for anthropogenic planning of LULC development patterns to coordinate ED and ecological conservation, which is essential for optimizing future regional urban planning and maintaining ecosystem carbon balance (Liao et al, 2022;Sun et al, 2022;Tian et al, 2022b).…”