Abstract:

Land use change is an important factor of increasing global atmospheric carbon dioxide content, only secondary to the fossil fuel combustion. Rational land use is the base of lowcarbon economy, and is also the key point in the construction of “twooriented” society. At the same time, many human activities are closely related to land use, such as social construction, economic development, industrial plan, city expansion and energy consumption. Therefore, researches on carbon emission from land use are of practical significance on the development of low carbon economic and “twooriented” society construction. The objective of this paper is to estimate the amount of land use carbon emission, to analyze the carbon emission effects of different land use patterns, and to decompose the land use carbon emission factors of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration. With Wuhan Urban Agglomeration as the study object, we first estimated the amount of carbon emission from the land use. We then analyzed the carbon emission effects of different land use patterns and the spatiotemporal variations of the carbon emissions. Finally we decomposed the land use carbon emission factors of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration to provide reference and guidance to “twooriented” society construction of Wuhan Urban Agglomeration. The methods included literature survey and LMDI model. The results showed that: (1) the amount of landuse carbon emission in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration was from 953 million tons in 1996 up to 4550 million tons in 2010 with the average annual growth of 1182%, presenting an increasing trend. (2) The land use carbon emissions intensity of residential and industrial land was the maximum in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration, and the land use carbon emissions intensity of arable land was the minimum. There were some differences between carbon emissions intensity and variation in different land use types. (3) There were very clear spatial and temporal variations on Wuhan Urban Agglomeration from 1996 to 2010. The  growth rate and amplitude of carbon emission varied, and the carbon emission also varied by city unit. (4) Factors of land use change, economic level, and population scale had a positive impact on amount of landuse carbon emission in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration; on the contrary, factors of energy efficiency and energy structure had a negative effect on the amount of landuse carbon emission in Wuhan Urban Agglomeration. We should use land rationally and accelerate the transformation of economic development mode to reduce the land use carbon emissions