## 3 Results
### Potential of Carbon Uptake from Optimal LMPs  
Mapping the environmental factors revealed that there was considerable heterogeneity in terms of vegetation cover (Figure 1c), soil cover (Figure 4a), and landforms (Figure 4b). The segmentation analysis using a combination of all the key environmental factors highlights both spatial heterogeneity among the patches and spatial homogeneity within the patches in terms of the factors (Figure 4c). The heterogeneity among the segmented patches can be one important reason explaining the variations of NPP across GGA. The NPP variation within the patches, on the other hand, does not come from the environmental factors and will be attributed solely to the differed impact from LMPs. The spatial distribution of the carbon uptake potential, with implementation of optimal LMPs, in GGA is presented in Figure 5a. Compared to NPP flux, the carbon uptake potential highlights a reversed pattern, namely locations presenting a relatively high potential flux in carbon capture have a lower NPP flux. For example, forests in the northern part in GGA, which present the highest NPP flux, have less potential in carbon capture; conversely, the region showing less NPP flux, e.g., the settlement area in the middle and southern part, is likely to bring more potential in carbon capture if the LMPs are optimized. The potential of carbon uptake in GGA suggests that, on average, vegetation can bring an extra flux of 185 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\), or 1.3 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) in total across the land cover area of 7020 km\({}^{2}\), given a full implementation of the optimal LMPs (Figure 5b). However, the carbon uptake potential shows high variation among the land cover classes (forests, croplands, urbanized, and rangelands). As the largest carbon sink, forests in GGA are expected to improve NPP by only 60 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) in flux and 0.22 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) in total by optimizing LMPs. Croplands can bring a higher flux, i.e., 209 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) in carbon uptake potential but less total potential, i.e., 0.07 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) due to its relatively small land cover area. Urbanized/settlement areas are likely to contribute the most in terms of carbon uptake potential, totaling 0.92 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) with an average flux of 354 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\). Lastly, rangelands are expected to bring an extra carbon uptake by 249 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) in flux and 0.026 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) in total. It is clear that urbanized areas, though taking only the second position in the land cover area, may play the most important part in improving carbon uptake after the implementation of optimal LMPs (Figure 5c,d). Figure 4: Soil (S) types: (**a**) landforms (L) (**b**) and the derived segmented patches (**c**) from S, vegetation (V) cover (refer to Figure 1c), and L. The colors in (**a,b**) show aggregation of the environmental factors (i.e., soil cover and landforms) and in (**c**) the homogeneous patches derived from the L, V, and S factors, where \(n\) in each figure indicates the numbers of classes. The current carbon uptake and future potential in carbon uptake of different land cover classes are illustrated in Table 3. On average, the carbon uptake is expected to improve by \(\sim\)30% compared to its current amount (1.3 vs. 4.4 TgC yr\({}^{-1}\) in total and 185 vs. 622 gC m\({}^{-2}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) in flux). For urbanized areas, carbon uptake is expected to more than double its current level (1.25 times) given optimal LMPs are implemented. Croplands and rangelands can capture 40% and 41% more carbon, respectively, than their current carbon uptake level if LMPs are freely transferable across locations.