Carbon Cycling and Carbon Sequestration in Wetlands

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land–Climate Interactions".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 December 2025 | Viewed by 485

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: ecohydrology; carbon sequestration; soil organic carbon; wetlands
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Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai 264003, China
Interests: soil management; soil policy; soil organic carbon
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Guest Editor
Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 211135, China
Interests: soil organic carbon; wetland greenhouse gas emissions

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Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China
Interests: wetland greenhouse gas emission; carbon cycling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Wetlands are the largest carbon pools available and play a vital role in global carbon cycling and carbon sequestration, making them crucial for climate mitigation. Although widely recognized as important carbon sinks, significant uncertainties remain in estimating their carbon sequestration potential due to limitations in the number and representativeness of observational sites. There are still gaps in our understanding of carbon budget evaluations. Additionally, wetland carbon dynamics are highly sensitive to environmental changes, such as human activities and climate change, which may weaken their carbon sequestration capacity, even turning them into carbon sources. This Special Issue aims to analyze the carbon dynamic process in wetlands, estimate the carbon sequestration potential, reveal the key mechanisms behind them, and explore quantitative assessment methods for their carbon sequestration potential in order to provide a scientific basis for enhancing the carbon sequestration capacity of wetland ecosystems.

This Special Issue aims to reflect on state-of-the-art studies that focus on carbon cycling and carbon sequestration potential in terrestrial and tidal wetland ecosystems. In doing so, experts from different fields will be brought together, including soil scientists, biologists, geologists, hydrologists, social and economic scientists, and others.

The submission of manuscripts that link the following themes will be welcome:

  • Carbon cycle process and environmental impacts;
  • Carbon sequestration mechanisms in terrestrial and coastal ecosystems;
  • The estimation of carbon sequestration potential;
  • Technologies enhancing carbon sequestration and carbon sink;
  • The economic and social values of carbon sequestration.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Ligang Xu
Dr. Xiaobing Chen
Dr. Junxiang Cheng
Dr. Jiaxing Xu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • carbon cycling
  • carbon sequestration
  • climate change
  • soil organic carbon
  • blue carbon
  • wetlands

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

29 pages, 4278 KB  
Article
Coupling Coordination Relationship and Evolution Prediction of Water-Energy-Food-Wetland Systems: A Case Study of Jiangxi Province
by Zhiyu Mao, Ligang Xu, Junxiang Cheng, Mingliang Jiang and Jianghao Wang
Land 2025, 14(10), 1960; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14101960 - 28 Sep 2025
Abstract
Against the backdrop of global population growth and intensified resource competition, the sustainable development of the water-energy-food system (WEF) is facing challenges. Wetlands, as key ecological hubs, play a crucial role in regulating water cycles, energy metabolism, and food production, thus serving as [...] Read more.
Against the backdrop of global population growth and intensified resource competition, the sustainable development of the water-energy-food system (WEF) is facing challenges. Wetlands, as key ecological hubs, play a crucial role in regulating water cycles, energy metabolism, and food production, thus serving as a breakthrough point for resolving the bottleneck of resource synergy. Incorporating wetlands into the WEF framework helps us comprehensively understand and optimize the interrelationships among water, energy, and food. This paper proposes an indicator system based on WEFW to study the coupling of water-energy-food-wetland systems and analyzes the evolution of the comprehensive development index of WEFW and its coupling relationship in Jiangxi Province from 2001 to 2022. It uses the grey correlation model to explore the sustainable development capacity of wetland resources, water resources, energy resources, and food resources in Jiangxi Province, and employs a geographical detector model to quantify the contribution of wetlands to WEFW. The research results show that (1) the comprehensive evaluation of WEFW systems in various cities in Jiangxi Province has generally improved, but there is imbalance in regional development. Cities such as Nanchang and Jiujiang have performed well, while cities like Jingdezhen and Xinyu need to enhance resource integration and sustainable development. (2) The coupling coordination degree (CCD) has experienced a process of “stability-fluctuation-recovery”, with a significant increase after 2014, and the spatial differentiation characteristics are obvious. (3) Wetlands play a dominant role in the spatial differentiation of CCD, and their interaction with water, energy, and food resources significantly enhance the explanatory power of their impact on CCD. (4) The grey model indicates that the CCDs of WEFW systems in most cities of Jiangxi Province have a projected annual growth rate of 1.8% (2022–2032), reaching 0.71–0.73 in leading cities. These results emphasize the importance of wetland protection and sustainable resource management in promoting regional coordinated development. The research and prediction of the coupling coordination relationship of water-energy-food-wetland systems can provide a scientific basis for the sustainable development of Jiangxi Province and also offer important scientific references for other regions to achieve a balance between ecological protection and resource utilization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbon Cycling and Carbon Sequestration in Wetlands)
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