Evaluation and Prediction of Carbon Emissions on Land Uses in Shaanxi

For environmental security, any extended land use may cause increases in carbon emissions and raise concerns. To provide a guidance for the sustainable future regional development, the stress-response model was applied to firstly establish an indexing system for analyzing the spatial and temporal carbon emissions associated with the land uses in Shaanxi. In the end, strategies to reduce air pollution could be made available for the province. The improved unbiased metabolism-GM (1, 1) model was used to project the situation for 2015 to 2025. The results showed that (1) from 2005 to 2015, the carbon emission security index increased at first, and then decreased, with the best state appeared in 2010; (2) the index was regional dependent, i.e., the highest in the southern Shaanxi followed by the central and the northern region a spatial clustering among the prefectures was evident; (3) most prefectures in the province faced a borderline or critical level on the security index challenged by various stress factors, but the response system seemed significantly improved; and, (4) the status from 2015 to 2025 was expected to continuously deteriorate as most prefectures remain in the critical or unsafe state with respect of carbon emission. It seemed imperative that appropriate measures be adopted starting from the relatively sensitive issues to safeguard the environment from serious carbon emissions in the province.