Study On Forest Health Assessment And Operation Decision Of Culai Mountain Forest Park Ecological Health

With the economic development of human society and the deterioration of ecological environment, gradually, the knowledge of the forest among people was enriched, and the ecological value of forests even social values were recognized by the whole society. Now, China has paid important attaintion to ecological forest, both to the ecological forest area and forest quality. Since the founding of our country, because of the lacking of scientific programming,the work of forest management was not comprehensive and the indiscriminate felling of trees was very serious, so now the stand structure of artificial ecological forest was single, with poor stability and low resistance. Most of the public ecological forest was under extensive management which resulted in the difficulty to the improvement of the health of artificial ecological forest, and these problems has been noticed and studied by forestry workers.A health forest was the basis for its ecological function.Based on the assessment of forest health, programming scientificly of ecological forest management and improving the health condition was of great importance. The research of the theory and practice of forest health has made the evaluation of forest health operational. In this context, Culai Mountain in Shandong Province was chosen as the research project, and based on data of field investigation and laboratory soil test, five indicators i.e. natural environmental factors, growth factors, biological diversity factors, soil stress factors and resilience factors were analized by using principal component analysis to choose a representative indicator to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of their health, and the results showed that:a) There were some differences of the health of the Culai ecological forest: the health of the pure Alnus japonica forest and pure Robinia pseudoacacia forest was good, their health score are 1.12 and 0.68; The health of Pinus tabulaeformis/Robinia pseudoacacial mixed forest, pure Quercus acutissima forest and pure Pinus densiflora forest were sub-healthy, the healh score are 0.12, -0.03 and -0.21; However, the health level of the pure Pinus tabulaeformis forest, the Pinus tabulaeformis/Platycladus orientalis mixed forest and the pure Larix kaempferi forest were bad, they got the lowest score: -0.38, -0.43 and -0.50. In general, the health state of the hardwood forest was better than that of the coniferous forest.b) The shrub species in Culai ecological forest had few difference, however, there were a lot of differences in the coverage, height and number. Under the pure Pinus densiflora forest and Pinus tabulaeformis/Platycladus orientalis mixed forest, the species with the largest number was shrub. Under the pure forest of Alnus japonica pure forest, there were few shrubs, and there were a few Vitex negundo L. var. heterophylla. under the pure Robinia pseudoacacia forest. The analysis shows that the growth of pure Alnus japonica forest was very fast, and the canopy density were more than 90%, so under the forest, the light transmittance was very bad and this fact has seriously affected the growth of shrubs. There was little difference in herbal biodiversity, and the health of alder and black locust was good while the biological diversity was low; the health of the pure Pinus sp. forest was bad, but the biological diversity was high; because of the high density, there is no obvious advantage in the mixed forest.c) For soil stress, all indexes measured for the Pinus tabulaeformis/Robinia pseudoacacial mixed forest and black locust performed relatively better, in which, organic matter, available phosphorus and nitrogen were higher than other forest plants, and the porosity, K and other indicators were maintained at a high level ; and the worst soil porosity was that from the pure Pinus densiflora forest, but the related indicators of soil nutrients were better than pure Robinia pseudoacacia forest which was consistent with tree height and diameter at breast height; as a whole, the pure hardwood forest and the mixed forest of coniferous and broad leaves was more closely related to organic matter and total nitrogen than the pure forest of coniferous, and relatively higher value were obtained for those indexes. This fact implied that the pure hardwood forest and the mixed forest of coniferous and broad leaves had better effectiveness for soil improvement than the pure forest of coniferous.d) The evaluation analysis showed that the factors which affected Culai forest health was stand density, soil nutrients, tree growth, the shrub layer diversity and natural regeneration capacity. Although the natural environment had great impact on forest health, it was difficult to change the operation model, and the only thing we can do was to change the plant configuration.Through the analysis and evaluation of the health of the Culai ecological forest,we discussed the management measures in this paper. According to the results, we can offer some proposals on specific management measures and overall management programming. The specific level included adjustingstand density, enhancing water and fertilizer management, and protecting the seedlings; and the overall level included afforestation, management of the young forest, tending, improvement of inefficient stand and cutting update, pest and disease control, fire atrip construction and other infrastructure, and during these measurements to make appropriate operating decisions.