| In order to tackle global climate changes, a research team from the Institute of Karst Geology in Guilin has been conducting the karst carbon sink study for three yeas under the auspices of the geological survey projects. Until now, 29 karst carbon sink monitoring stations in China and 3 stations in other countries have been established. In order to explore the capacity of atmospheric CO2 sink in karst progresses of China, the authors investigated all relative factors of karst carbon sink such as rock chemical contents, soil gas CO2, land and vegetation coverage and discharge and bicarbonate concentrations of water flow in some typical karst basins, carried out some special researches such as karst carbon sink in different land uses, karst carbon sink from autogenic water, karst carbon sink of vegetation rehabilitations of the rock desertification environments, soil organic carbon solidification in karst area and carbon sink from photosynthesis of hydrophytes in karst water and, as a result, achieved a lot of new scientific progresses. In order to calculate the atmospheric CO2 sink in karst progresses of China, the authors divided karst districts in China into four types of karst regions, i.e., the karst region in south China, the karst region in northern China, the Tibet plateau karst region and the buried karst region, with their areas being 564,800 km2, 325,800 km2, 556,000 km2 and 2,001,000 km2 respectively. The total new atmospheric CO2 sink formed in karst regions of China is 3699.1′104 t CO2/a, which is the atmospheric CO2 sink quantity of all 3,440,000 km2 karst areas in China. The importance of the karst carbon sink study was reported in the journal “Science” in 2011. |