Carbon emissions in rural areas based on land use types: Estimation methods and micro-empirical evidence

Promoting green development in agriculture and rural areas is a crucial path for advancing rural revitalization and addressing climate change challenges. Given that the countryside serves as the fundamental unit of agricultural production and living activities, rural carbon accounting becomes a vital foundation for promoting rural emission reduction, carbon sequestration, and high-quality development. Firstly, this paper reconstructs the rural-scale carbon accounting inventory based on six major land use types: cropland, forest land, farms, watersheds, settlements, and other land use types, and comprehensively incorporates and meticulously examines multiple subcategories of rural production and life. The accounting methods and specific formulas for each carbon source and sink under the first to third level of the inventory are systematically sorted out. The accounting method covers a wide range of categories, takes into full consideration the complexity and unity of the rural system, and the results enable a horizontal comparison of carbon sources and sinks in rural carbon accounting. Secondly, taking Zili Village in Banan District of Chongqing Municipality as a typical case study, we selected the emission coefficients in line with the regional characteristics, combined the field research data with some statistical yearbook data, and carried out the accounting and detailed analysis of carbon emissions and carbon sequestration in the rural scenarios. The case study not only provides micro research support for rural carbon accounting, but also is of great significance in the policy level for precise policy making and the demonstration and popularization of rural carbon accounting methods. The study shows that: 1) Based on the detailed accounting results, the carbon accounting list and the accounting method proposed in this paper can calculate the specific values of carbon sources and sinks of different categories, and make horizontal comparisons based on the accounting results, which is practical and universally applicable. 2) Arable land, farms, settlements, and other land-use categories are the main sources of carbon, with settlements being the most important type of carbon-emitting land-use, which accounted for 75.2% of the total emissions of carbon emitting land use categories. Forests and waters are the carbon sink land use types, and forests dominate the carbon sequestration, accounting for 99.9% of the total carbon sequestration of carbon sink landscapes in the accounting example. 3) On the micro scale, villages with comprehensive land use types have strong carbon sink potential. Take Zili Village in Chongqing as an example, the comprehensive annual carbon sink of the village in 2023 was 3722.153 t. Finally, based on the current status of the accounting methodology and the results of the village carbon accounting, this study proposes policy recommendations and low-carbon realization paths at the micro-village scale from three aspects: 1) Enriching the village carbon accounting database and optimizing the quantitative accounting methods. 2) Giving full play to the potential of forest carbon sinks to help enhance the emission reduction of major carbon sources, especially focusing on the carbon sources and sinks of croplands and settlements. 3) Giving full play to the advantages of each land category to promote the coordinated coupling between land types.