[Spatiotemporal pattern of carbon sources and sinks in Yangtze River Delta region, China]

Yangtze River Delta region is the world's sixth and China's largest urban agglomeration. Its rapid and massive urbanization has also caused a series of ecological and environmental impacts. This paper accounted the inventory of carbon sources and sinks in Yangtze River Delta region during 1995-2010 and analyzed their spatiotemporal patterns. It was found that the carbon sinks increased by 9.43 million tons from 1995 to 2010, in which forest ecosystem net production in Zhejiang Province was the largest contributor. The "grain for green" policy implemented since 2003 in China played a significant role in increasing the forest area and the carbon sinks. The carbon sources increased by 327 million tons, and energy consumption and industrial processes based emissions accounted for 96% of total carbon sources in 2010. Due to the large share of manufacturing and heavy industries in economy and their dependence on the high carbon intensity energy, either the amount or the growth speed of carbon emissions in Jiangsu Province was the top one in the whole region. Moreover, because the growth speed of net carbon emissions that occurred upon the built-up land was much faster than the sprawl speed of urban built-up land, the net carbon emission intensity kept increasing in the whole region, in which Jiangsu Province demonstrated the fastest increase.