Speaker
Description
Domestic forests play an essential role in carbon absorption during carbon neutrality. Accordingly, projects to increase carbon absorption are continuously growing through managing and creating forests, preventing forest conversion, and recycling of woody biomass. Until now, forest carbon absorption has been measured and managed at the national level, but local governments have not approached specific carbon absorption indicators in various ways. The carbon absorption footprint of essential local governments can be defined as carbon absorption, carbon absorption per national land area, and carbon absorption per forest area. Here, the carbon absorption footprint is a tool for determining the total carbon absorbed by tree species (forests, roadside trees, parks, urban forests, etc.) and ground cover plants in the region.
Therefore, in this study, the carbon absorption amount of metropolitan and local governments was calculated for the whole country, and the carbon absorption footprint was calculated. The carbon absorption amount was calculated by matching the standard carbon absorption amount by tree species based on the forest area by forest area/age level. Carbon absorption was quantified for 250 basic local governments nationwide, and research results were calculated for the carbon absorption ratio to the national land area and the carbon absorption ratio to the forest area.
As a result of the study, as of 2020, the region with the highest number of metropolitan areas was in the order of Gangwon-do, Gyeongsangbuk-do, and Jeollanam-do, and the lowest absorption was in the order of Gwangju Metropolitan City, Sejong Special Self-Governing City, and Daejeon Metropolitan City. Hongcheon-gun, Inje-gun, and Pyeongchang-gun of Gangwon-do were the primary local governments with high absorption ratios compared to the national area, and Yeongdeungpo-gu of Seoul, Jung-gu of Busan, and Seongdong-gu of Seoul showed the lowest percentage. Lastly, essential local governments with a high absorption rate compared to forest areas were Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Ulju-gun, Ulsan, Hongcheon-gun, Gangwon-do, in order, and Seongdong-gu, Seoul, Gangdong-gu, and Dongjak-gu, Seoul, respectively, with low rates. Overall, much carbon was absorbed in Gangwon-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do, but the absorption rate was lower than that of Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, and Incheon compared to the national area. Compared to the forest area, the carbon absorption rate was uniform across the country. Based on this study, it is necessary to develop a forest creation scenario and make efforts to continuously reduce carbon by absorbing more carbon through it.
Afterward, it is considered that it will be an essential indicator for planning in the future for metropolitan or primary local governments as carbon absorption can change according to afforestation during forest management.
References
[1] Jae Bong Chang, Yohan Lee, Determination of Priorities in the Forest Carbon Sink Enhancement Policies in the Republic of Korea, Journal of Agriculture & Life Science 49(4), 95-104 (2015)
[2] Ham, Boyoung, Song, Cholho, Park, Eunbeen, Choi, Sol-E, Lee Woo-Kyun, Development of Forest Activity Data and Forest Management Rate for National Greenhouse Gas Inventory in the Forest Sector, Journal of Climate Change Research, 11(1), 53-63 (2020)
[3] Seongyeop Jeong, Jongsu Yim, Sunjung Lee, Jungeun Song, Hyokeun Park, JungBin Lee, Kyujin Yeom, Yeongmo Son, Detection of Site Environment and Estimation of Stand Yield in Mixed Forests Using National Forest Inventory, J. Korean Soc. For. Sci., 112(1), 83-92 (2023)
[4] Ministry of Land, 2020, Intellectual Statistics Yearbook
[5] National Institute of Forest Science, 2019, Standard Carbon Absorption of Major Forest Tree Species (ver. 1.2)
[6] Korea Forest Service, 2021, Basic forest statistics for 2020
[7] Mina Hong, Sugyeong Park, Hangnan Yu, Halim Lee, YoungJin Ko, Woo-Kyun Lee, Estimating forest area of Chuncheon and analysing its amount of carbon sink using Landsat 8 satellite data, The Korean Society for Geo-Spatial Information System, 2019(5), 152-157 (2019)
| Keywords | Distribution chart by national district (city district), Carbon absorption footprint, Forest carbon absorption, Forest physiognomy and forest area by grade |
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