Carbon emission and activity footprint assessment of edible raw material forest seedling production systems in China

LIU Qian-wen; ZHAO Mei-fang; GUO Fei; FU Jun; KANG Peng; TAN Yi-bo; ZHENG Wei; SUN Meng-de; WEI Lan-ying

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China Environmental Science ›› 2025, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (5) : 2884-2896.

Carbon Emission Control

Carbon emission and activity footprint assessment of edible raw material forest seedling production systems in China

LIU Qian-wen^1,2, ZHAO Mei-fang^1,2, GUO Fei³, FU Jun³, KANG Peng^1,2, TAN Yi-bo^4,5, ZHENG Wei^4,5, SUN Meng-de^1,2, WEI Lan-ying⁶

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Abstract

Under the synergistic advancement of global climate governance and China's "Dual Carbon" strategy, the development of forestry carbon sink systems urgently required breakthroughs in carbon quantification bottlenecks within seedling production. Edible raw material forests played an important role in improving the ecological environment and increasing economic growth, and estimating the carbon footprint of seedling production was crucial for assessing the carbon sink of forestry. By surveying existing star anise nursery operations for primary data in Guangxi, a new process-based life cycle inventory (LCI) dataset an 8cm×12cm star anise seedling of a typical edible raw material forest production system was created, covering three stages from seed collection to the transportation of seedlings to retailers. Incorporating the new LCI data into life cycle assessment (LCA) method, the total global warming (GW) impact of a star anise seedling was 0.145kgCO₂e, of which energy and materials consumption constituted 57.2% and 28.8% of total emissions. Electricity use is dominated by irrigation demands (75.9%) and water was estimated to be just over half of these emissions (60%). Among the production activities, the total environmental impact of the product was dominated by the irrigation at the field container seedling stage, which contributed 0.07kgCO₂e/seedling. In this case, the change in energy consumption had a notable impact on the carbon footprint, with a sensitivity of 0.804. Among them, the input of diesel had the largest impact on carbon footprint (42.4%). The results indicated that optimizing clean energy structures and implementing efficient water and nutrient management strategies could significantly reduce carbon emissions during seedling cultivation and offered practical guidance for advancing carbon labeling systems for edible forest products and supported forestry carbon neutrality progress.

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adaptive mitigation / carbon footprint analysis / Chinese star anise seedling / life cycle inventory

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LIU Qian-wen, ZHAO Mei-fang, GUO Fei, FU Jun, KANG Peng, TAN Yi-bo, ZHENG Wei, SUN Meng-de, WEI Lan-ying. Carbon emission and activity footprint assessment of edible raw material forest seedling production systems in China[J]. China Environmental Science. 2025, 45(5): 2884-2896

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