Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Carbon Emissions in the Pearl River Basin, China: From the Perspective of Land Use and Biomass Burning

Abstract

The study of carbon emissions is crucial for climate change and sustainable development. The interaction between land use and human activities has a significant impact on the intensity of carbon emissions, and biomass burning generates carbon emissions by affecting the type of land use. Based on remote sensing data, including land use, nighttime lighting, and so forth, as well as carbon emission calculation methods for land use and biomass burning, we constructed a high‐resolution carbon emission grid for the Pearl River Basin, China (PRB) by combining land use and biomass burning carbon emissions (BBCE). The results reveal that forests, covering approximately 68% of the total area, are responsible for about 99% of the carbon absorption. Carbon emissions from construction land grew rapidly, with 85.15% of the increase in its area led to a 175.89% rise in its associated carbon emissions. Biomass burning is the main source of carbon emissions in the less economically developed counties of PRB. Furthermore, we applied an interpretable machine learning model (SHAP) to analyze the inequality of drivers across PRB. The results show that natural factors such as temperature have a more significant impact on carbon sink areas, while anthropogenic factors such as population have a more significant impact on carbon source areas. This study provides a spatial and temporal analysis of carbon emissions from land use and biomass burning in the PRB from 2001 to 2020. The assessment provides valuable insights for effective management and optimization strategies targeting land use carbon emissions within this basin.