Global development has been heavily reliant on the overexploitation of natural resources since the Industrial Revolution. With the extensive use of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other forms of land-use change, anthropogenic activities have contributed to the ever-increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, causing global climate change. In response to the worsening global climate change, achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is the most pressing task on the planet. To this end, it is of utmost importance and a significant challenge to reform the current production systems to reduce GHG emissions and promote the capture of CO2 from the atmosphere. Herein, we review innovative technologies that offer solutions achieving carbon (C) neutrality and sustainable development, including those for renewable energy production, food system transformation, waste valorization, C sink conservation, and C-negative manufacturing. The wealth of knowledge disseminated in this review could inspire the global community and drive the further development of innovative technologies to mitigate climate change and sustainably support human activities.

Technologies and perspectives for achieving carbon neutrality

It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16–32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.

Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes

Annual review of environment and resources

Abstract. Land-cover change has been identified as an important cause or driving force of global climate change and is a significant research topic. Over the past few decades, global land-cover mapping has progressed; however, long-time-series global land-cover-change monitoring data are still sparse, especially those at 30 m resolution. In this study, we describe GLC_FCS30D, a novel global 30 m land-cover dynamics monitoring dataset containing 35 land-cover subcategories and covering the period 1985–2022 in 26 time steps (maps were updated every 5 years before 2000 and annually after 2000). GLC_FCS30D has been developed using continuous change detection and all available Landsat imagery based on the Google Earth Engine platform. Specifically, we first take advantage of the continuous change-detection model and the full time series of Landsat observations to capture the time points of changed pixels and identify the temporally stable areas. Then, we apply a spatiotemporal refinement method to derive the globally distributed and high-confidence training samples from these temporally stable areas. Next, local adaptive classification models are used to update the land-cover information for the changed pixels, and a temporal-consistency optimization algorithm is adopted to improve their temporal stability and suppress some false changes. Further, the GLC_FCS30D product is validated using 84 526 globally distributed validation samples from 2020. It achieves an overall accuracy of 80.88 % (±0.27 %) for the basic classification system (10 major land-cover types) and 73.04 % (±0.30 %) for the LCCS (Land Cover Classification System) level-1 validation system (17 LCCS land-cover types). Meanwhile, two third-party time-series datasets used for validation from the United States and Europe Union are also collected for analyzing accuracy variations, and the results show that GLC_FCS30D offers significant stability in terms of variation across the accuracy time series and achieves mean accuracies of 79.50 % (±0.50 %) and 81.91 % (±0.09 %) over the two regions. Lastly, we draw conclusions about the global land-cover-change information from the GLC_FCS30D dataset; namely, that forest and cropland variations have dominated global land-cover change over past 37 years, the net loss of forests reached about 2.5 million km2, and the net gain in cropland area is approximately 1.3 million km2. Therefore, the novel dataset GLC_FCS30D is an accurate land-cover-dynamics time-series monitoring product that benefits from its diverse classification system, high spatial resolution, and long time span (1985–2022); thus, it will effectively support global climate change research and promote sustainable development analysis. The GLC_FCS30D dataset is available via https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8239305 (Liu et al., 2023).


GLC_FCS30D: the first global 30 m land-cover dynamics monitoring product with a fine classification system for the period from 1985 to 2022 generated using dense-time-series Landsat imagery and the continuous change-detection method

Forest thinning increases soil carbon stocks in China

Mixed-species plantations can alleviate water stress on the Loess Plateau

Afforestation is considered one important means of mitigating climate change. However, it is still controversial whether mixed-species plantations (MP) were more conducive to the soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks than monoculture plantations (PP). We conducted a meta-analysis based on 21 publications to assess the effects of different afforestation modes as well as controlling factors of SOC stocks on the Loess Plateau of China. Compared with monoculture plantations, mixed-species plantations could significantly increase the response size of SOC stocks by 28%. For different species combinations, tree-shrub mixtures were more conducive to increasing the SOC stocks. In climate-limited regions (MAT 20 yr). Compared with abandoned land, afforestation on cropland, especially mixed-species plantations, could increase the SOC stocks by 10%. Additionally, compared with monoculture plantations, a stronger coupling relationship was observed between the soil total nitrogen (STN) and SOC stocks in mixed-species plantations. Our results suggest that for the Loess Plateau of China, planting mixed-species plantations containing nitrogen-fixing plants is a more effective approach to enhancing the SOC stocks than monoculture plantations.

Mixed-species plantations enhance soil carbon stocks on the loess plateau of China

Soil erosion poses a major threat to the sustainability and stability of global terrestrial ecosystems. Mixed forests have more advantages in restoring degraded land and enhancing soil fertility than monocultures, but their influence on soil erosion remains uncertain. Therefore, we presented a meta-analysis consisting of 261 paired observations of mixed forests and the corresponding monocultures from 65 studies to evaluate the effect of tree diversity on soil erosion in China. The results showed that compared with monocultures, mixed forests significantly reduced the annual runoff and sediment yield by 17.4% and 23.6%, respectively. Tree-shrub mixtures showed more efficiency in reducing runoff (24.2%) and sediment yield (32.1%) than tree-tree mixtures. However, the positive effect of mixed forests on soil erosion control was significant > 20 years after stand establishment. Mixed forests showed the highest capacity to control soil erosion at slope angles of 16°-25° (runoff: 27.7%; sediment yield: 37.7%). In terms of soil textures, mixed forests performed better with respect to soil erosion control on sandy soils (runoff: 21.4%; sediment yield: 30.1%), whereas significant differences were not observed between different stand types on clayey soils. In addition, in the dry areas (humidity index (HI) < 30), mixed forests conferred the greatest benefits in reducing runoff and sediment yield (25.8% and 33.0%, respectively). Our results indicate that increasing tree species richness is a suitable approach to controlling soil erosion in China. This research provides a scientific basis for the management and sustainable development of forest ecosystems in the future. 

Impacts of mixed forests on controlling soil erosion in China

Although ecological restoration has increased the stability and diversity of regional ecosystem services, its effects on public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services (CESs) remain unclear. Therefore, this study conducted a questionnaire survey of 455 interviewees in Ansai County on the Loess Plateau and combined the structural equation model (SEM) to explore the characteristics and influencing factors of public perceptions of CESs. Moreover, we also calculated landscape importance to quantify the impact of landscape features on CESs. The results showed that ecological restoration increased the overall public perceptions of CESs. Regarding the different types of CESs, the public most strongly perceived esthetic services but had the lowest perception of cultural heritage after ecological restoration. Regarding demographic characteristics, gender and age were the most important factors affecting public perceptions. Men were more likely to perceive CESs than women, while older interviewees had higher perceptions of the value of physical and mental health services, education and science than young interviewees. In addition, forestlands were perceived as playing more important roles than other landscape types in providing CESs. This study demonstrates that ecological restoration will improve public perceptions of CESs. Managers should incorporate public perceptions of CESs into the formulation of ecological management policies.

Impacts of ecological restoration on public perceptions of cultural ecosystem services.

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