Forest Landscape Pattern Of Southern Slope Of Mid-Qinling Mountains

Forest vegetation is the main part of the terrestrial ecosystem, which maintains and regulates the balance of ecological environment. Research on forest landscape pattern can explain from a macro perspective on forest structure, composition, function and dynamic process, which provide a scientific basis on the sustainable management of forest. This paper bases on the forest management investigation of QinglingCaizipin forest region. The experiment categorizes the forest landscape pattern according to the constructive species and co-edificato of the dominant plant communities in different subcompartment of forest, and use geographic information system software——Arcgis9.3 and landscape structural analysis software——Fragstats3.3 to analyse the data of the study. Basing on the above research, we commence to discuss the effect of grain size of landscape pattern indices and the landscape fragmentation features, providing scientific references for resource management, protection and rational development and utilization of the Southern Slope of mid-Qinling Mountains.The main conclusions are as follows:1. The appropriate range of grain size in the landscape pattern index is determined by the size of first scale domain. Of this study, the choice of 10 ~ 20m is suitable, so in the analysis of forest landscape pattern and fragmentation, 10m has been chosen as levels of grain size.2. In the study area, the coverage degree and the overall continuity of forest vegetation are good. The average number of fractal dimension index is close to 1.00, indicating that the boundary of the landscape patch fold less, and the overall stability of forest landscape is good.3. Oakery, which is the most important forest landscape type, covers the largest area of forest landscape, its continuity of distribution is the best, and owns the lowest level of fragmentation. However, due to habitat of Oakery involving intense human activities and disturbance, results in relatively poor stability of landscape structure. It will require greater protection of human efforts to reduce disturbance, and to protect Oakery vegetation from damage. Thereby the ecological balance of the entire region can be protected.4. Among all landscape types, Chinese chestnut forest is the artificial economic forest, and Larch tree forest lies on the high altitude areas, which has less habitats. They have less landscape patches, lesser landscape patch areas and a high fragmentation rate. Therefore they need the protection from human being more urgently in order to prevent the further fragmentation.5. The degree of fragmentation of the landscape is reflected by the edge density is essentially similar as that of the proportion of like adjacency adjacency index, but different from that of euclidean nearest-neighbor distance. After analyzing and discussing, we confirm that: (1) Pinus tabulaeformis forest has the most numbers of patches in the entire study area, it is more widely distributed but more concentrated in its habitats, so the euclidean nearest-neighbor distance is smaller, and its habitat fragmentation level is not high; (2) The situation of Pinus arrnandii forest is similar to the Pinus tabulaeformis forest, also because the distribution is more concentrated in some parts of area, the euclidean nearest-neighbor distance is also small; (3) In all forest landscape types in this study area, except that Oakery, Chinese chestnut forest and Larch tree forest, the edge density, the proportion of like adjacency adjacency and the euclidean nearest-neighbor distance of the other landscape types are not significantly different, the degrees of fragmentation are similar, belong to the moderate levels.