Carbon burial and carbon emission dataset of China's lakes

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a comprehensive dataset and methodology for lake carbon balance, useful for carbon cycle modeling and climate research.

🏢実務担当者:Offers a classification-and-management framework that could inform lake restoration and carbon management projects.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the role of lakes in carbon budgets, suggesting policy interventions for lake management to enhance carbon sinks.

Accurate assessments of lake carbon balance are essential for filling gaps in the global carbon budget and addressing climate change. However, persistent uncertainties arise from an incomplete understanding of intrinsic carbon sequestration and its balance with emission effects. Here, using source fingerprinting techniques, we isolated the autochthonous organic carbon (OCAuto) burial, which represents the intrinsic carbon sequestration of lakes. We found that OCAuto burial accounted for only 53.23% of total lake carbon emissions in the 2020s, leaving China’s lakes as carbon sources (−0.83 teragrams of carbon per year). Regionally, lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateaus have shifted to carbon sinks, whereas lakes in the eastern and northeastern regions remain major carbon sources. Scenario projections indicated that restoring China’s lakes to macrophyte-dominated states under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway SSP2-4.5 scenario could transition them into stable carbon sinks before OCAuto burial peaks around 2070. To facilitate this transition, we proposed a lake classification-and-management framework based on carbon sink potential and emission risks to guide carbon sequestration and climate mitigation efforts.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.stqjq2chsfirst seen 2026-08-01 05:43:30