Spatiotemporal Variability of Carbon Flux from Different Land Use and Land Cover Changes: A Case Study in Hubei Province, China

Carbon sources and sinks as a result of land use and land cover changes (LUCC) are significant for global climate change. This paper aims to identify and analyze the temporal and spatial changes of land use-based carbon emission in the Hubei Province in China. We use a carbon emission coefficient to calculate carbon emissions in different land use patterns in Hubei Province from 1998 to 2009. The results indicate that regional land use is facing tremendous pressure from rapid carbon emission growth. Source: sink ratios and average carbon emission intensity values of urban land are increasing, while slow-growing carbon sinks fail to offset the rapidly expanding carbon sources. Overall, urban land carbon emissions have a strong correlation with the total carbon emissions, and will continue to increase in the future mainly due to the surge of industrialization and urbanization. Furthermore, carbon emission in regions with more developed industrial structures is much higher than in regions with less advanced industrial structures. Lastly, carbon emission per unit of GDP has declined since 2004, indicating that a series of reform measures i.e., economic growth mode transformation and land-use structure optimization, has initiated the process of carbon emission reduction.