A research team led by Professor Chen Wenhui from the School of Economics and Management at Beijing Forestry University has published a paper titled "Coordinated development research on carbon sink and species diversity conservation in urban ecosystem: the example of Beijing" in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (HSSC), a Nature Portfolio journal.

Taking four functional areas of Beijing in 2015–2021 as the research object, the study calculated the carbon sink level and species diversity conservation level of the urban ecosystem, respectively, and measured their coordinated development.  

The results showed that: (1) The carbon sink level and species diversity conservation level of Beijing showed a significant upward trend from 2015 to 2021. Among them, the New Urban Development Area and the Ecological Conservation Area were higher than the Capital Functional Core Area and the Urban Functional Expansion Area. (2) The coordinated development of carbon sink and species diversity conservation of Beijing in 2015-2021 showed a relatively stable trend on the whole. From the perspective of different functional areas, the Ecological Conservation Area and the New Urban Development Area showed a good coordinated development, and most of them were in the state of "coordination" and "progress", while the coordinated development of the Capital Functional Core Area and the Urban Functional Expansion Area were in the state of "uncoordinated" and "degradation". (3) Further, according to the CI, it was found that the Capital Functional Core Area, the Urban Functional Expansion Area and the Ecological Conservation Area of Beijing belonged to the lagging type of carbon sink, while the New Urban Development Area transformed from the lagging type of species diversity conservation to the lagging type of carbon sink. 

The above results provide scientific support for optimizing urban ecological planning and formulating comprehensive strategies for low carbon and biodiversity conservation, crucial for advancing sustainable urban development. 

Humanities & Social Sciences Communications is a multidisciplinary journal in the humanities and social sciences published by Springer Nature and indexed in SSCI and A&HCI. It provides an international platform for research across the humanities, behavioral sciences and social sciences. 

Yuexin Shi is the first author of the paper, with Man Teng and Yu Zhang as co-authors. Professor Chen Wenhui is the corresponding author. This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant No. 2023SKY01]. 

Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08557-2