Intensive land management through policy intervention and spatiotemporal optimization can achieve carbon neutrality in advance

Ineffective control over industrialization and urbanization has exposed the shortcomings of land resource management. The overexploitation of limited high-quality land resources is exacerbating the global ecological and food crisis. There is an urgent need to change from "expansion" to "intensification" in land resource utilization. Taking the northwest oasis region of China as a case study, a spatio-temporal optimization model of land use and land cover (LULC) based on dynamic competitiveness evaluation was constructed, and four simulation scenarios, including natural growth without policy intervention (SN), economic priority (SE), food security (SF) and ecological protection (SP), were set up to evaluate and predict the contribution of land intensification to regional carbon neutrality. The results show that the total carbon emissions in the study region will rise sharply by 157.56% in 2030 compared with 2020 without policy intervention (SN). In contrast, all three land intensification scenarios have great emission reduction potential: total regional carbon emissions can be reduced by 21.15% (SE), 22.78% (SF), and 51.72% (SP), respectively, compared with SN. Notably, the implementation of the ecological protection policy (SP) in the region will result in an average carbon emission per unit of GDP of 0.57 t/104 yuan in 2030, which is 25.44% lower than in 2020, implying a downward trend in carbon emissions per GDP between 2020 and 2030, and SP scenario will see the region achieve carbon peaking before 2030. The results can provide novelty methods and policy opinions for optimal land management from the perspective of a low-carbon city.