JOURNAL OF NANJING FORESTRY UNIVERSITY ›› 2013, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (04): 75-79.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1000-2006.2013.04.014

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Spatio-temporal changes in forest fragmentation, disturbance patterns over the three giant forested regions of China

SHEN Wenjuan, XU Ting,LI Mingshi*   

  1. College of Forest Resources and Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
  • Online:2013-08-18 Published:2013-08-18

Abstract: The increasingly aggravated forest fragmentation around the globe, particularly, in the developing nations has hindered the pathway to sustainable forest management, which poses a serious threat to the effective conservation of the organisms that are closely forest-dependent. Using the directly comparable Globcover datasets(2005 and 2009), a fragmentation model coupled with geospatial metrics was applied to characterize changes in forest fragmentation, disturbance and spatial interplays patterns over the three giant forest regions of China. The outcomes of the work were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of current forest management approaches as well as several forest ecological projects implemented and invested by the central government. Results suggested that an accelerated fragmentation in southern and southwestern China and a decelerated fragmentation in northeastern China were observed in the current work. Also, there was a descending anthropogenic disturbance in the three giant forested regions. National disturbances have been intensified in southern and southwestern China while almost remained stable in northeastern China. Agricultural land uses in southern and southwestern China were identified as the major contributor catalyzing the fragmentation, while urban land uses had little contribution to forest fragmentation in China. Actually, the observed fragmentation and disturbance patterns are closely related to Chinese land tenure, topography, economic development stages and demographic transition trends. These findings were benefit for developing the strategies of biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management, and assessing the effectiveness of the existing forestry ecological projects.

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