A GIS-based approach for quantifying and mapping carbon sink and stock values of forest ecosystem: A case study

Abstract This paper explored a GIS-based approach for quantifying and mapping economic values of carbon sink and stock of forest ecosystem. The approach highlighted use of GIS to develop database, perform spatial analysis and map economic values. And it was applied to a case of Tiantai County in Zhejiang Province of southeast China, for quantifying and mapping the values of vegetation carbon sink (VCSi), vegetation carbon stock (VCSt) and soil carbon stock (SCS) of forest ecosystem. By integrating forest inventory data and soil inventory data into GIS, vegetation photosynthesis method combined with forest biomass method and stem volume method were employed to quantify the VCSi and VCSt, and soil type method was applied to calculate the SCS. The selected carbon sink value and carbon stock values in the case area were mapped as data layers in GIS after gridding process, with each layer containing monetary values for every 25m cell. Results showed that the economic values of VCSi, VCSt and SCS of the case were approximately 895.26 million Yuan, 1369.40 million Yuan, 9303.21 million Yuan, respectively, and each value was spatially heterogeneous for the case. Depending on spatial maps of carbon sink and stock values, the suggestions and implications for improving carbon sink and stock are extensively discussed.