Study On Landscape Characteristics And Landscape Coordination Of Large And Small Stone Forest Scenic Spots In Yunnan Province

The Stone Forest National Scenic Area in Yunnan has been designated as UNESCO Global Geopark and World Heritage Site respectively in 2014 and 2007.The Major and Minor Stone Forest areas are the main sightseeing areas of the whole scenic area,displaying unique pinnacle karst landform.Rich karst morphological features combine harmoniously with vegetation,water pools and meteorological phenomena,the Stone Forest displays exceptional natural beauty.Through the combination of science and humanities,this paper focuses on the analysis of the landscape features of the Stone Forest,the maintenance of its harmony,and the safeguard of its world heritage aesthetic value.The stone forest landscape is a comprehensive landscape dominated by karst rockscape and associated with plantscape,waterscape and meteorological phenomena.In terms of the stone forest,it is the thick and pure carbonate rock,after being shaped by differential weathering,subsoil and surface erosion,that comes into the stone pillars,stone clusters and various karrens.Topography and rock joint play an important role in the distribution of the stone pillars and the tour routes,open spaces formed in the junctions of joints,tall and thick stone pillars formed in the depressions.Also,other elements such as vegetation,algae and meteorological phenomena added rich colors to the stone forest landscape.The constituent elements of the stone forest landscape such as rock,vegetation and water are all in a dynamic process,but the rate of change of each element is greatly different,of which,the change of rockscape is the slowest and the vegetation is the fastest.In recent years,due to the neglection of vegetation management,uncontrolled vegetation has overgrown and impacted heavily the stone forest landform and its spectacular and beautiful scenery.There is an obvious contradiction between the still rock and the dynamic vegetation,the visual impacts of the overgrown vegetation to the stone forest include block out,cover up,conceal,submerge,jam up,dwarfing,and messing up,etc.Besides,plant root wedging has damaged the stability of stone pillars,and alien plant species have damaged the ecosystem.Accordingly,to maintain harmonious stone forest scenery,the key is to manage vegetation.In line with some successful practice in previous vegetation control,seven principles for vegetation management have been put forward in this paper,including clear up,transparentize,trim,rarefy,etc.Besides,to maintain harmonious scenery,the water bodies and incompatible buildings within the scenic area also need to be managed.