Ecological Processes And It,s World Heritage Values, South China Karst

Karst landform is distributed in China widely, in which, it is the most spectacular and typical in southern karst region in China, and has an important status both at home and abroad. South China Karst(SCK) world natural heritage,including the first and second perid, has a total of 6 sites, which is the outstanding representative of landfom development in southern. The ecological process involve ecosystem dynamics and all phenomena in ecosystem, involved the content widely. It included both energy and material circulation of ecological system inmicro scale,and covered the ecological system of organism and environment and its interaction mechanism in macro scale. In view of the fact, there is less research on the regional ecological system in Karst, which is based on geological and geomorphic evolution process at home and abroad. According to the basic theories of geography, ecology, geology, geomor-phology and other related disciplines, from July 2013 to December 2014, by consulting literature, investigation, and comparative analysis and other methods, this research displayed the South China Karst ecology evoluation process from the ecosystem types, vegetation vertical distribution, ecological adaptation and biological diversity system, compared and analyzed the other that meet the ecological processes and standards of the world natural heritage of Karst, which included in the preliminary list of world heritage sites, and explored the value of world heritage ecological process standards. The following main conclusions:(1)The main ecological process of South China Karst: the ecological evolution process in the region affected by the complex geological conditions, the combination of landform and the warm and humid subtropical monsoon climate. The development of a variety of ecosystem types, those are forest, river and a large amount of underground caverns. The vertical distribution of vegetation is obvious. Creatures have high ecological ada-ptability. The Biological Co-evolution with the environment of karst. The vegetation communities showed drought, calcium and other characteristics, and involved in the karst biological process, which is rich in biodiversity. The biological gene exchange is blocked by karst canopy niche, which make the evolution of a large number of endemic species. The effect of quaternary glaciation is small. Many old larvae remains endangerred species, it shows the evolution of life and ecology of ongoing process.(2) Based on the ecological process standards, SCK region compared with 4 karst world heritages, 4 tentative heritages and 5 other sites which has important karst ecological process, the analysis shows: the landform in SCK region is well developed, types are various, geological and ecological processes in humid subtropical climate is the main driving force of evolution and has unique characteristics and unique in the world, which shows the strong influence in Karst ecological evolution. It developed the ecosystem and vegetation types which well matched the Karst’s environment and has strong native characteristics. It is the typical representative of ecological process in tropical subtropical continental Karst area.(3) World heritage value of ecological processes in South China Karst: “South China Karst” completely record the genealogy subtropical vagetation distribution from south to north, by succession formed respecttively evergreen broad-leavd, evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved, evergreen sclerophyllous species such as the representative of the top community and numerous organisms in different karst geological background, complex terrain and subtropical local climate, etc. The history of biological evolution record a series of environment change process from sea to land and freshwater process since the Paleozoic, the Qing hai-Tibet Plateau obstruct the Quaternaty glacical climate to preserved ancient relict plant. Ecosystem diverse types structural integrity, forests, rivers and caves ecosystems are closely connected, biological adaptation are rich and have strong uniqueness, systemic demonstrated subtropical karst ecological processes complete series and ongoing ceological succession. Other heritage sites of South China Karst area are Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas in Yunnan, which is the typical representative in ecological evolution of subtropical Karst mountain canyon. Other potential heritage sites incude Heaven Pit and Ground Seam Scenic Spot, the Yangtze Gorges Scenic Spot and Guangxi Nonggang National Nature reserve. The former two sites are the typical cases in ecological evolution of deep river karst of middle mountain valley; Guangxi Nonggang is the only tropical monsoon forest Karst reserve in China, and a typical in ecological process of continental tropical bare Karst area.