Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is one of major driving factors for the climate change. In order to reduce the negative effect of the climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force in Feb 16, 2005, drew the conclusion that reforestation and afforestation were cost-effective means to mitigate global warming. As the largest plantation countries in the world, China has implemented a series of important policies and nationwide afforestation and reforestation programs since the 1970s.
As one of six major forest projects in China pushed by National Forestry Bureau, National Natural Forest Protection Project (NNFPP), launched in 1998 in 12 provinces, could not only improve local environmental conditions and eliminate local forest deterioration, but also play an important role in increasing China’s forest carbon sequestration through increasing the area of plantation and reducing the timber production. To accurately estimate the carbon sequestration of the NNFPP and provide basic data for China’s diplomatically international climate treaties, we estimated the carbon sequestration of this project by using the volume-biomass method and China’s forest inventory database (1989～1993) and National Forestry Statistics from 1998 to 2002. The results showed that the area of reforestation and afforestation in this project had increased to 302.61 104 hm2 at the end of 2002 and the carbon storage of the NNFPP was 21.32 Tg over the period of 1998～2002. The increase of carbon sequestration from reducing the timber production was 22.75 Tg. In total, the storage of carbon sequestration was 44.07 Tg, equal to about 1.2% of total national industrial CO₂ emission during this period. For different regions and subprojects, Nature Forest Protection Project of the Northeastern China, upper reach of the Yangtze River and middle reach of the Yellow River have led an increase of 76.15, 160.09, and 66.38 104 hm² at the end of 2002 in the area of reforestation and afforestation, respectively, which accounted for 25.2%, 52.9% and 21.9% of total area of this project. These three major regions and subprojects have accumulated carbon of 6.39, 12.60, and 2.34 Tg C, which consisted of 30.0%, 59.1% and 10.9% of total accumulated carbon, re spectively.