Abstract
China plans expanding 49.5 million hectares of new forests by 2050 to strengthen carbon sequestration. However, estimates of the carbon benefits from this expansion rarely consider the effect of ‘forest edge’, where tree mortality increases under intensified stress from wind, drought, pests, and fire. Here we show that proximity to forest edges substantially reduces biomass carbon storage, and develop a spatial optimization strategy that prioritizes planting in areas that minimize edge effects. Our projections show that forestation optimized for edge effects results in a 51% increase in carbon gain (986 ± 22 Tg by 2060), with approximately half of the total gain driven by reduced edge effects. These findings demonstrate that ignoring edge effects can significantly overestimate carbon sink potential and highlight spatially optimized forestation as a pathway to maximize climate mitigation and ecological benefits.
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Data availability
The historical climate data is available from https://data.tpdc.ac.cn/. The future climate data is provided at: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/. The land cover maps used are the China Land Use and Cover Change dataset, which can be obtained from the Data Center for Resources and Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences: http://www.resdc.cn. The soil data is available from https://soil.geodata.cn/. The administrative boundary data were obtained from https://cloudcenter.tianditu.gov.cn. The national forest inventory data are protected and are not publicly available due to data privacy laws.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2021YFD2200405 (S.R.L.)), China National Science Foundation (No. 32361143869 (Z.Y.), 32371663 (Z.Y.)), and Jiangsu Provincial Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (BK20250044) (Z.Y.).
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Z.Y. conceived and designed the research. Y.L.D. performed simulations and drew figures. Z.Y. and Y.L.D. wrote the first draft together. E.A., S.R.L., T.P., S.S., and W.B.Y. extensively edited the manuscript. G.Y.Z., F.M.Z., W.Y.H., S.O., P.C., and P.S.S. provided essential suggestions to improve the manuscript.
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Dong, Y., Yu, Z., Pugh, T. et al. Enhancing carbon sinks in China using a spatially-optimized forestation strategy. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68288-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68288-5
