Difference in carbon budget from marshlands to transformed paddy fields in the Sanjiang Plain, Northeast China

Over the past decades, extensive marshlands had been converted to paddy fields in the Sanjiang Plain, China; however, the effect of this land use change on ecosystem carbon budget is still much uncertainty. Valuation has been proved to have a great role for carbon budget characterizing directly. This study assessed carbon budget changes based on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration before and after marshlands conversion to paddy fields. By remote sensing data interpretation, the area of marshlands converted to paddy fields between 1982 and 2010 was 1.31 x 10(5) ha at ArcGIS 10.2.1 software environment. We used the ecosystem carbon sequestration and the total greenhouse gas emissions to analyze ecosystem carbon budget, and found that carbon budget of marshlands before conversion (37.75 x 10(6) t CO(2)eq) was significantly higher than that of their converted into paddy fields (22.31 x 10(6) t CO(2)eq) in the Sanjiang Plain, with the loss of 15.44 x 10(6) t CO(2)eq. By carbon tax payment, we further assessed that the economic loss of carbon budget caused by the marshlands conversion in the Sanjiang Plain was up to 8.64 x 10(8) Yuan. It can provide the reference for wetland ecosystem especially ecosystem service conservation.