Land use, total carbon emissions change and low carbon land management in Coastal Jiangsu, China

Given the background of global warming, carbon emission reduction has become a topic of global importance. Land use change not only influences carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems directly, but it also indirectly affects anthropogenic carbon emissions, which occur more frequently in coastal regions. Based on data of energy consumption, industrial products, waste, soil organic carbon, and vegetation, together with land use images of five typical years, this paper calculated the total carbon emissions in coastal Jiangsu, China, assigned the detailed carbon emission items to different land use types, and optimized land use structure to low carbon emissions using the Linear Programming Model. It was found that carbon emission intensity in coastal Jiangsu was much higher than the average for China as a whole, and that energy consumption contributed most to local carbon emissions with the contribution from animals second. Urban land accounted for the most concentrated and highest intensity of carbon emissions. Between 1985 and 2010, the transfer of cropland to built-up land accounted for the largest percentage of the total transferred area and contributed most to the increase of carbon emissions. In particular, the limitation of urban land will play a key role in carbon emission reduction. Our optimized land use structure can control and decrease carbon emissions effectively and thus, it is an important tool worth the consideration of land managers and policy makers.