Guangming Daily, Beijing, April 13 (Reporter Jin Haotian) From 2001 to 2023, my country's vegetation continued to turn green, at a speed of three times the global average. The main reasons are the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, agricultural intensification and large-scale afforestation. The reporter learned from Peking University that the school’s Academician Park Shilong’s team evaluated the trend of vegetation growth in my country from 2001 to 2023, and analyzed the mechanism of the impact of extreme high temperature drought on my country’s vegetation growth and its trends in 2023. The result was recently published in "Chinese Science: Earth Science".
For decades, my country has implemented strategic ecological projects such as large-scale tree planting and afforestation, and actively promoted green development models such as agricultural intensification, which has dominated the greening of global vegetation, and has made great achievements in the construction of ecological civilization, making important contributions to the response to global climate change.
The team found that under the influence of extreme warm and dry climate in 2023, the greenness of vegetation in my country has not decreased but increased, reaching the third highest since 2001, which shows that extreme climate events have not weakened the long-term trend of vegetation in my country. This is mainly due to the spatial compensation and seasonal compensation mechanism for changes in land vegetation growth in my country. The greenness of vegetation in the Northeast, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and other areas has continued to increase, offsetting the impact of the decline in vegetation growth in the southwest, Inner Mongolia and other places; in the southern regions, vegetation growth has decreased due to high temperature and drought in spring and summer, but has recovered rapidly in autumn.
The research results provide an important basis for more accurately assessing my country's land carbon sink potential and land use management effectiveness, helping to have a deeper understanding of the important role of China's vegetation changes in the construction of ecological civilization in the new era, and are one of the clear examples of China's leading global green development.
