Forest carbon sinks (FCS) play an important role in mitigating global climate change, but there is a lack of more accurate, comprehensive, and efficient forest carbon stock estimates and projections for larger regions. By combining 1980–2020 land use data from the Northeast China Forestry (NCF) and climate change data under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP), the land use and cover change (LUCC) of NCF in 2030 and 2050 and the FCS of NCF were estimated based on the measured data of forest carbon density. In general, the forest area of NCF has not yet recovered to the level of 1980. The temporal change in the FCS experienced a U-shaped trend of sharp decline to slow increase, with the inflection point occurring in 2010. If strict ecological conservation measures are implemented, the FCS of the NCF is expected to recover to the 1980 levels by 2050. We believe that the ecological priority (EP) scenario is the most likely and suitable direction for future development of the NCF. We also advocate for more scientific and stringent management measures for NCF natural forests to unlock the huge potential for forest carbon sequestration, which is important for China to meet its carbon neutrality commitments.

The assessment of forest ecosystem services can quantify the impact of these services on human life and is the main basis for formulating a standard of compensation for these services. Moreover, the calculation of the indirect value of forest ecosystem services should not be ignored, as has been the case in some previous publications. A low compensation standard and the lack of a dynamic coordination mechanism are the main problems existing in compensation implementation. Using comparison and analysis, this paper employed accounting for both the costs and benefits of various alternatives. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and the Pearl growth-curve method were used to adjust the results. This research analyzed the contribution of each service value from the aspects of forest produce services, ecology services, and society services. We also conducted separate accounting for cost and benefit, made a comparison of accounting and evaluation methods, and estimated the implementation period of the compensation standard. The main conclusions of this research include the fact that any compensation standard should be determined from the points of view of both benefit and cost in a region. The results presented here allow the range between the benefit and cost compensation to be laid out more reasonably. The practical implications of this research include the proposal that regional decision-makers should consider a dynamic compensation method to meet with the local economic level by using diversified ways to raise the compensation standard, and that compensation channels should offer a mixed mode involving both the market and government.