IA-SDSS: A GIS-based land use decision support system with consideration of carbon sequestration

  • Authors:

  • Jun Wang;Jingming Chen;Weimin Ju;Manchun Li

  • Affiliations:

  • International Institute for Earth System Science (ESSI), Nanjing University, No. 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China and Department of Geoinformatics and Survey, College of Civil Engineering, Na ...;Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 100 St. George St., Room 5047, Toronto M5S 3G3, Canada;International Institute for Earth System Science (ESSI), Nanjing University, No. 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China;International Institute for Earth System Science (ESSI), Nanjing University, No. 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China

  • Venue:
  • Environmental Modelling & Software
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) can play a positive role in mitigating global warming by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into vegetation and soils. Local entities (e.g. local government, community, stockholders) have been making great efforts in enhancing carbon sequestration (CS) of local forests for mitigating global climate change and participating in international carbon-trade promoted by the Kyoto Protocol. Approaches and tools are needed to assess the enhancement of CS through land use changes and proper policy decisions. This paper presents an integrated assessment framework and a spatial decision support system (IA-SDSS) as a tool to support land-use planning and local forestry development with consideration of CS. The IA-SDSS integrates two process-based carbon models, a spatial decision (EMDS) module, a spatial cost-benefit analysis (CBA) module, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) module. It can provide spatially explicit CS information as well as CS-induced economic benefits under various scenarios of the carbon credit market. A case study conducted in Liping County, Guizhou Province, China demonstrated that the IA-SDSS developed in this study is applicable in supporting decision-making on 'where' and 'how' to adopt forestry land use options in favor of CS.