Incorporating site suitability and carbon sequestration of tree species into China’s climate-adaptive forestation

Strategic selection and precise matching of climate-resilient tree species are pivotal for climate-adaptive forestry in terms of forest-based climate change mitigation and adaptation to maximize its full potential. Current forestation plans often fail to account for environmental shifts, particularly at individual species resolution, jeopardizing suboptimal carbon sequestration over the long term. Here we developed a climate-adaptive optimization framework to guide tree species selection and planting in China based on projections of species-specific habitat viability and range redistribution under future climate scenarios. Leveraging over 200,000 tree samples from National Forest Inventories spanning 1999-2018, we quantified habitat viability declines of 12.1-42.9% by 2060 for currently dominant plantation species due to climate threats. Through optimized species-site matching and strategic timber harvesting at peak carbon uptake, we identified 43.2 million hectares sustaining climate-resilient forestation during 2025-2060 - planting approximately 46 billion climate-adapted trees with a total sequestration potential of 3,822.6 Tg of carbon, representing a 28.7% increase compared to unmanaged scenarios. Our study underscores the critical role of optimized adaptive forestation under future climate change scenarios in ensuring carbon mitigation while delivering technical guidance for climate-adaptive forest management plans supporting China’s net-zero aligned goals.