The Trade-Off and Coordinated Management of Land Use Compactness and Urban Carbon Sink Ecosystems Towards Net-Zero Goals
A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land–Climate Interactions".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 839
Editors
Interests: land cover and use change (LCLUC); terrestrial carbon cycle; carbon disturbance; socio-ecological consequence of LCLUC
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: land resource management; urban/rural sociology; remote sensing of global change and the carbon cycle
Interests: geoinformatics (GIS); cartography; geodesy; surveying
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Urban land use compactness is a pivotal measure for improving land use efficiency and curbing unregulated urban sprawl, and urban carbon sink ecosystems act as an essential natural carrier for carbon sequestration and offsetting anthropogenic urban carbon emissions. Both serve as core pillars for global cities advancing toward net-zero carbon goals. While the importance of both has been widely recognized, the trade-off and synergy mechanisms between land use compactness and urban carbon sink ecosystems remain poorly understood. For example, how can we quantify the impacts of compact land development on the structure and function of urban carbon sink ecosystems? How can we coordinate the development objectives of compact land use and the protection of carbon sink ecological space? What kind of planning models and management strategies for the coordination of compactness and carbon sinks should be constructed to achieve net-zero carbon in urban land use? We are assembling this Special Issue to better answer these questions, aiming to systematically explore the coordinated management paths of land use compactness and urban carbon sink ecosystems for the attainment of net-zero goals, thus providing scientific support for the sustainable utilization of urban land.
The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights about the mutual feedback mechanisms between land use compactness and urban carbon sink ecosystems; quantify the trade-off and synergy relationships at different urban scales and development stages; and propose targeted coordinated management strategies and planning schemes for the dual goals of sustainable land use and net-zero carbon. This topic is highly consistent with Land’s core scope of land system science, sustainable land use, and urban land planning and also responds to the journal’s focus on societally relevant and innovative research on climate change and carbon neutrality.
This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:
- Quantitative analysis of land use compactness' impacts on urban carbon sink ecosystems;
- Multi-scale coordinated planning of land compactness and carbon sink ecological space;
- Synergistic management strategies for compact development and carbon sink conservation;
- Green infrastructure planning and nature-based solutions for enhancing carbon sinks in compact urban environments;
- Remote sensing and big-data-driven monitoring of intensive land use and carbon sink ecosystem dynamics;
- Cross-city comparative studies on compactness-carbon sink relationships across different urbanization stages and developmental contexts;
- Future scenario simulation and backcasting of land use pathways toward net-zero carbon through compactness-carbon sink coordination.
We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.
Prof. Dr. Li Wang
Dr. Shidong Liu
Prof. Dr. Biswajit Nath
Dr. Jie Zhang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- land use
- urban planning
- sustainability
- carbon emissions
- carbon source
- carbon sink
- net-zero goals
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