Methods and Uncertainties in Evaluating the Carbon Budgets of Regional Terrestrial Ecosystems
区域尺度陆地生态系统碳收支评估方法及其不确定性

Quantitative assessment of carbon budgets at regional scale or in different ecosystems is an important scientific issue in the field of ecosystem and global change, which can provide scientific basis for forecasting climate change and regional carbon management serving for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Though assessment and authentication of regional carbon budgets could not be fulfilled precisely using current measurements and evaluation methods, many progresses had been made. In this paper, we reviewed the observation technique systems, especially the methods and their uncertainties in evaluating regional carbon budget. To evaluate the carbon sink function of ecosystems, main industries, and projects related to carbon sink and their spatiotemporal patterns quantitatively, it is urgent to build an observation and experiment network based on field platforms and to develop a multi-scale observation system comprised by field platforms, terrestrial transects and ecological networks combined with satellites and aviation observations. The system based on observation data, ecological process model, remote sensing model and GIS spatial analysis is also needed to be built. These systems should be under the guideline of multi-scale observation, multi-method confirmation, multi-process fusion, across-scale cognition and simulation. Meanwhile, cycles of carbon, nitrogen and water in terrestrial ecosystems are coupled by various biological processes, while the knowledge of the coupling mechanisms and their influences on the spatiotemporal patterns of carbon source or sink was limited, so it will be an important aspect and new research hot in the research of ecosystem C cycle and regional carbon budget assessment and authentication.