Impact of land use change on carbon emissions in the rapidly urbanizing Nanjing: Past trajectories and future projections

Abstract

Abstract Land-use carbon emissions are the second largest source of emissions after energy combustion, and since cities are the primary source and aggregator of emissions, studies related to land-use carbon emissions in urban areas are crucial to understanding the impact of human activities on regional sustainable development. Taking Nanjing as an example, this paper analyzes the carbon emissions under different land use types in Nanjing from 2010 to 2020 based on four remote sensing image data periods in 2010, 2015, 2018, and 2020, using ArcGIS software combined with the land use transfer matrix. Meanwhile, to predict the impact of land use changes on carbon emissions in Nanjing, IDRISI software was borrowed to simulate the land use in 2030–2040, and relevant estimation methods were adopted to predict the carbon emissions from land use. The analysis results show that the net carbon emissions in Nanjing are on a rising trend year by year, in which the contribution of construction land to carbon emissions is the largest and shows a continuous growth trend. The prediction results show that the growth rate of carbon emissions in Nanjing will slow down and become smaller in 2030–2040, indicating that the national management of carbon emissions from urban land use is gradually increasing.