A century of change: Documenting ecological landscape patterns in northwestern Yunnan

This thesis provides a biogeographical analysis of the ecological landscape changes that have occurred in northwestern Yunnan over the past century. The practical purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the major changes in landscape ecology and suggest causes behind the long-term patterns of ecological landscape change. I determine what effects these changes have had on ecosystem health and biodiversity and use the information that I have attained to create recommendations for conservation policy. By replicating historical landscape photographs taken in northwestern Yunnan, I am able to profile changes to the geographical distribution of land use and vegetation communities. I argue that this methodology - repeat photography- can be used to develop realistic initiatives for conservation and development programs. I contend that the causes of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss have been misidentified in contemporary conservation policy. Through landscape rephotography, I determine that the patterns of land use and vegetation communities have been driven by a complex relationship between biological, physical and anthropogenic actors and that many of these environmental variations that are perceived as contemporary conservation threats were actually evident a century ago. I conclude this dissertation by making recommendations for future steps to encourage ecological sustainability in northwestern Yunnan. I address the need for more research and education, specifically in the fields of climate change research and forest regeneration, as well as adaptive co-management for ecosystem monitoring, and conservation. I argue for further 'ground truth' and baseline information to be developed within northwestern Yunnan to ensure that realistic and relevant conservation targets can be developed for this biodiversity hotspot.