Information System Of The Rare And Endangered Plants In Chongqing

The paper surveys 68 rare and endangered plants in the 40 districts and counties (autonomous county or city) that are under jurisdiction of Chongqing City. The researcher looked into each plant's morphological characteristics, geographic distribution, habitat, ecological features and present situation of protection by consulting with literatures, visiting herbaria and arboretums, and going out for field trips. Then, the researcher analyzes the floristic features and the reasons of endangering of those plants, and then carry out the quantitative analysis on the prior protection and puts forward some suggestions for the protection. The researcher takes the advantage of modern information technology to manage all the data, establishes an Information System of the Rare and Endangered Plants in Chongqing programmed by Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, JavaScript and Photoshop, and other softwares, and publishes it in the Internet and duplicates it on CDs.The research results are as follows:1. According to the books Red List of Plants in China (volume 1) and List of National Protected Wild Plants (1999), there are totally 68 rare and endangered plants in Chongqing, which belong to 62 genera in 38 families (no overlap). Among them, 7 species of 6 genera in 5 families are pteridophyta; 18 species of 15 genera in 6 families are gymnosperm and 43 species of 41 genera in 27 families are angiosperm.2. In term of the growth types,51 species of 68 rare and endangered plants are ligneous , accounting for 75% of the total. Among them, there are 45 species of trees, and 6 of shrubs, accounting for 66.2% and 8.8% of the total respectively. There are 17 species of herbs, accounting for 25% of the total. This indicates that the most species of the rare and endangered plants in Chongqing are ligneous plants, and their distribution is also narrow.3. The distribution of the rare and endangered plants in Chongqing is not even. The horizontal distribution is mainly in the Jinfo Mount, Baima Mount, and Simian Mount, north of Dalou Mountain Range. Chengkou and Wuxi, south of Daba Mountain Range, and Wu Mount, Qiyue Mount, Wuling Mount are also densely distributed. The vertical distribution is mainly in Daba Mountain Range, Dalou Mountain Range, and Wuling Mount.4. The rare and endangered plants in Chongqing are closely related to those in Hubei, Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. The similarity coefficient of species is more than 40%, indicating the consistency of climate condition in the Subtropical Zone and the genetic relationship of flora.5. There are 11 types of distribution of 56 genera seed plants of the rare and endangered plants inChongqing. Most of them are Chinese endemic distribution (17 genera), Tropic Asian distribution (9 genera), East Asian and North American disconnected distribution (8 genera), and East Asian distribution (8 genera). These 11 types possess obvious temperate features with 23 genera of temperate distribution patterns, accounting for 41.1% of the total.6. The result of quantitative analysis on the prior protection is that, of 68 species of the rare and endangered plants in Chongqing, there are 6 endangered plants, 27 vulnerable plants, 32 rare plants, and 3 "safe" plants. There are 13 species in the first class of species to be protection, 35 species in the second class, 17 species in the third class and 3 species in the fourth class.7. The Chongqing municipal government has set up 42 Area Natural Reserves and is planning to set up germplasm reserve base, arboretum, rare animal and plant breeding base, etc. Some colleges and research institutions took actively part in the biodiversity protection and utilization and made many important achievements. However, the objective and obligation of some natural reserves are obscure, the scale of some arboretums is very small, and the protection of plants in Three Gorges Area is very ineffective. These problems are urgent to be solved.8. This research led to an Internet Web page of Information System of the R...