biostudies-literatureUnknown15(1)Yue CUnleashing the land sector's potential for climate mitigation requires purpose-driven changes in land management. However, contributions of past management changes to the current global and regional carbon cycles remain unclear. Here, we use vegetation modelling to reveal how a portfolio of ecological restoration policies has impacted China's terrestrial carbon balance through developing counterfactual 'no-policy' scenarios. Pursuing conventional policies and assuming no changes in climate or atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) since 1980 would have led China's land sector to be a carbon source of 0.11 Pg C yr^-1 for 2001-2020, in stark contrast to a sink of 175.9 Tg C yr^-1 in reality. About 72.7% of this difference can be attributed to land management changes,Nature communications9708https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC11550817biostudies-literatureContributions of ecological restoration policies to China's land carbon balance.PMC11550817Xu MCiais PPiao SHe JZhang HXu CDeng LZhang LShen HWang JZhang PYue CLi WLi YZhu LTao SLeng YChang JZhao JfalseContributions of ecological restoration policies to China's land carbon balance.Unleashing the land sector's potential for climate mitigation requires purpose-driven changes in land management. However, contributions of past management changes to the current global and regional carbon cycles remain unclear. Here, we use vegetation modelling to reveal how a portfolio of ecological restoration policies has impacted China's terrestrial carbon balance through developing counterfactual 'no-policy' scenarios. Pursuing conventional policies and assuming no changes in climate or atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) since 1980 would have led China's land sector to be a carbon source of 0.11 Pg C yr^-1 for 2001-2020, in stark contrast to a sink of 175.9 Tg C yr^-1 in reality. About 72.7% of this difference can be attributed to land management changes,2024-01-01T00:00:00Z2024 Nov2025-04-04T00:33:06.758Z2025-04-04T00:33:06.758ZS-EPMC115508173952178910.1038/s41467-024-54100-9