Valuing The Biodiversity Conservation Of Desert Ecosystems In China

As a complex, dynamic functional unit, ecosystems provide people with all kinds of benefits. The actions people take caused great damage to ecosystems services. The desert ecosystem is an important part of the terrestrial ecosystems, and is also the main type of ecosystem in northwest China. To assessment the ecosystem services value on the basis of ecological regionalization have positive significances on the correct understanding of desert ecosystem, to implement the assessment result and to make ecological policy. This paper assesses the biodiversity conservation value of desert ecosystem in China on the basis of ecological regionalization. The results showed that:(1) The ecological regionalization research on the desert ecosystem applied experienced assessment and GIS method, the top-down division method was adopted, so it is a qualitative and quantitative research. A variety of scale regionalization were for reference. Two domains,17natural regions,34regions were identified in the desert ecosystem according to annual average temperature, differences in terrain, drought index, accumulated temperature, NOAA image, China’s vegetation types.(2) This paper assess the biodiversity conservation value of desert ecosystem in China trying to explore emergy theory proposed by H. T. Odum, and evaluated the added value due to species scarcity by means of endangered species index, referring to the species endangerment criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The results showed that the total biodiversity conservation value of desert ecosystem in China was3.89×104billion Yuan RMB, of which scarcity value was3.64×103billion Yuan RMB. Among the total value, the animal conservation value accounted for90.20%.The results indicated that desert ecosystem is providing huge value on the biodiversity conservation, with increasing trends from east to west and south to north. In terms of regions, southern Xinjiang is the highest region of conservation value reaching up to9.08×103billion Yuan RMB; northern Qiangtang, southern Qiangtang are not much difference; and Northeast China Plain and Northern Shaanxi Plateau are lower regions in conservation value.