Research On The Habitat Assessment And Restoration Of Giant Panda In Wolong Nature Reserve After Earthquake

On May12,2008, an earthquake measuring8.0magnitude struck Wenchuan area of Sichuan Province. The earthquake affected the majority of China’s provinces. Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu Province were severely damaged. Wolong Nature Reserve is one of the most important protected regions for Giant Panda and Alpine forest system, and it was also damaged in the earthquake. Large area of the surface vegetation was destroyed, especially the Giant Panda habitat was serious fragmented by earthquake. Meanwhile, the protection agency and the research facilities were also damaged in the earthquake. Community residents’life were affected, so it is urgent to rebuild their house.In this paper, the author analyzed and evaluated the impact of earthquake damage and human activities after the earthquake on the giant panda habitat, by using a synthetical technology composed of Global Positioning System(GPS), remote sensing and geographic information system, based on two periods of land cover maps derived from remotely sensed date, Landsat TM on July2007and2008. After image preprocess, the author obtained the result of the earthquake spatial distribution, by unsupervised classification (ISODATA). The results suggested that:8243.7hm of surface vegetation were destroyed in the earthquake in this region,7946.5hm2of forest area were lost, and the total area of damaged zone is95.3%. Most of earthquake damaged area was distributed in mountains with the elevation between2100--4200m above sea level and slope between>10°and20--50°. Comparative the space distribution features of earthquake damage area and the giant panda habitat, it was observed that both of them were overlapped highly. About5%of giant panda habitat was damaged by the earthquake, which is mainly occurred in elevation between1100-3700m.1673.1hm2in this area are suitable habitat for pandas, and5111.2hm2are less suitable habitat.Community residents moved to centralized resettlement area after the earthquake, and give all-out support to recover the traffic, communication and other infrastructure. The large-scale construction project in Wolong nature reserve inevitably had the great influence on giant pandas and their habitat. Through field survey, the author got the spatial distribution information of post-disaster residents relocation area by GPS measurement, and built spatial database combining with the region1:100000topographic map. The influence of human activity source on the giant panda activity was divided into three categories:strong, middle and weak. Establishing the buffer of these sources and overlying the giant panda suitable habitat map, the impact of human activities can be calculated. The results shows that there were3860.6hm2of the giant panda habitat within the buffer, which is4.52%of the total area of the giant panda suitable habitat after the earthquake.And947.6hm2were influenced very seriously, which is24.5%of human acting area.254.4hm2was suitable habitat for pandas, and692.2hm2was less suitable habitat. Moderate affect area is1435.6hm, the weakest-affected area is1477.4hm.In order to confirm the key recovery area of the giant panda habitat after the quake, the author chose Cumulative Resistance Model to simulate the spread of giant pandas from the main source. Elevation, slope and vegetation types were selected as the resistance factors, the main activity place for pandas were source. Calculated the cumulative resistance by ARCGIS spatial analysis, the result shows that:the key area was in Shawan, Xingfu gou, Research Center to Zhenghegou, Zhenghegou to Longtangou, etc. The author suggests that it should be set apart hills for forestry, supplemented by artificial restoration in the regions.The Wolong Nature Reserve is the giant panda reserves in China, the giant panda and its habitat were hit in the earthquake. In this paper, the author analyzed the earthquake damage and the affect on the habitat for giant pandas by the human activity. It underlines that the scientificity, rationality and availability of the efficiency and quality have important influence for the giant panda habitat restoration after the earthquake and also for the reserve management project.