## 5 Conclusions  
This paper combines remote sensing technology and meteorological, topographic, and land use data to visualise the dynamics of vegetation carbon sinks in Taihang Mountains from 2000 to 2022 with the help of multiple modelling methods and uses a parameter-optimal geographic detector and multivariate regression residual analyses to carefully analyse the driving mechanisms of its influencing factors, obtaining the following conclusions:  
1. From 2000 to 2022, the trend of NEP growth in the Taihang Mountains was obvious, and the average value of NEP in the Taihang Mountains was 289 gC\(\cdot\)m\({}^{-2}\cdot\)a\({}^{-1}\), showing the characteristics of high in the northeast and low in the west and centre of the country in the spatial distribution, with a trend of gradual increase from the northeast to the southwest. Combined with geographic features, regional differences in DEM and vegetation types were found to be important factors for the spatial heterogeneity of the vegetation carbon sink. 2. Over the 23 years from 2000 to 2022, the vegetation carbon sink in the Taihang Mountains region as a whole showed an increasing trend, and the area of the eastern low carbon sink area evolved over time and shrank. In addition, the vegetation carbon sink in the Taihang Mountains region had less fluctuation over time and was more stable. * Vegetation carbon sinks in the Taihang Mountains are influenced by a variety of natural factors, of which the explanatory power of each natural factor is as follows: DEM (0.174) > temperature (0.148) > precipitation (0.026) > slope (0.017) > slope direction (0.003). The explanatory power of natural factors on vegetation carbon sequestration is significantly stronger than that of single factors in both pairwise interactions, with the interaction between DEM and precipitation having the strongest explanatory power. In addition, compared with climate change factors such as temperature and precipitation, the contribution of anthropogenic activities to NEP changes within more than 90% of the Taihang Mountain area is above 60%, indicating that the contribution of NEP changes is basically driven by anthropogenic activities and that human activities drive NEP changes in the Taihang Mountain area more significantly. The contribution of anthropogenic activities to NEP change is significantly higher than that of climate change, showing a strong promoting role. Combined with the above conclusions, the vegetation carbon sinks and land use in the Taihang Mountains have changed considerably in more than 20 years, and anthropogenic activities have seriously disturbed them. Therefore, the protection of high carbon sink areas from human activities should be strengthened in the future development process, consolidating the existing benefits of ecological carbon sinks, such as adding ecological buffer zones at the borders of large-scale high carbon sinks to reduce the interference of human activities in high carbon sinks. Meanwhile, reducing carbon sources can be achieved by adjusting the spatial layout of green space within the construction land, increasing green space coverage, and effectively enhancing the carbon sink capacity of urban green space. In addition, in future research, we should further improve the quality of data and the accuracy of the research model, expand the analysis of the influence of other driving factors on the carbon sink of vegetation in the Taihang Mountaina Area, and analyse more comprehensively the natural and anthropogenic driving factors of the carbon sink of vegetation in the study area, so as to further innovate the research on the methodology and modelling aspects. Conceptualisation, Q.Q. and S.J. ; methodology, S.J. ; software, Q.Q. ; validation, Q.Q. and S.J. ; formal analysis, A.C.; investigation, C.X. ; resources, C.X. ; data curation, S.J. ; writing--original draft preparation, Q.Q., S.J. and A.C.; writing--review and editing, A.C. and C.X. ; visualisation, S.J. ; supervision, A.C.; project administration, A.C. and C.X.