Study On Conservation System Of Forest Biodiversities In The Changbai Mountain Region, Jilin, China

Biodiversity conservation is a long-term and arduous task, and the determination of high-conservation value area and rational function zoning are the key issue for efficient biodiversity conservation. The Changbai mountain region makes the most specie-rich area in the North Temperate Zone of Eurasia, and it is of important significance for both science and practice. The Chinese government has established a conservation system, which consists of 24 natural reserves in order to maintain the forest cover and other natural ecosystems in the Changbai mountain region. This made a significant impact. Due to the limitation of the planning level at the beginning of establishing the reserve, the conservation efficiency and reasonable degree of the reserve are still insufficient today. As for this phenomenon, we assessed the existing reserves and newly analysed the priorities in the study area and the function zoning.We under the guidance of framework of systematic conservation planning method and process, according to the feature of biodiversity the systematic conservation planning software C-Plan and geographic information system (GIS) technology have been used to calculate the irreplaceability value of regional planning units and determine high-conservation value regions of biodiversity and the distribution of conservation GAP. On the basis of the irreplaceability analysis, the study utilised the contribution value (Ti) and conservation effectiveness value (C) and complementary value Sjk to assess the existing conservation system. Then we combined the irreplaceability value with a human activity index, established the relation between different value thresholds and function zoning, carried out function zoning on conservation gaps and existing reserves, Conservation efficiency of the new functional zones and that of the original ones was also compared to biodiversity conservation. Finally, the landscape characteristic indexes were calculated in high a conservation value region during nearly 20 years. Then the dynamic change of forest landscape pattern in Changbai mountain was analyzed.The main results of this research are as follow:(1) The results of the irreplaceability analysis indicated that More than 60% of the planning units has lower conservation value in the existing conservation system, and 80% of the planning units with high conservation value have not been covered by the existing conservation network. There are obviously seven GAPs in the layout. They are the Changbai mountain on southern slope of the Yalu River basin region (GAP1), southeast of Mudan ridge-Zengfeng ridge-the Nangang mountain region (GAP2), west of the Changbai mountain natural reverse-east of Longgang mountain (GAP3), the middle section of the Weihu ridge region (GAP4), northeast of Laoye ridge-north of Weihu ridge region (GAP5), the Harba ridge region (GAP6), and east of Harba ridge-north of Pan ridge (GAP7).(2) The existing conservation network covers 127 conservation objects.35.5% of the protected objects reached the conservation target. The conservation effectiveness value of whole conservation network is 62.27. There is a high complementarity among nature reserves, and the distinction between conservation objects is obvious, which indicates reasonable site selection for nature reserves.(3) Under the condition of a changing conservation range, we add conservation areas, and establish seven new reserves and six corridors at GAPs. After the conservation GAPs are involved, the conservation effectiveness value of the conservation network is increased from 62.27 to 91.19. 136 conservation objects are conserved,35.5% of the protection objects reached the conservation target. The conservation effect is significantly enhanced.Under the condition of not changing the conservation range, the adjustment is made for the function zone of nine existing reserves. The conservation area is 9215.5 km2 which decreases by 5568.67 km. With the new function zones, the conservation effectiveness value of the core zone, the core zone+buffer zone, and the entire three zones increased from 9.02 to 16.34,11.23 to 21.66, and 21.11 to 24.23, respectively. After the optimization is made for a functional division of nine conservation areas, the overall conservation efficiency of the conservation network which consists of 24 conservation areas is 64, increasing by 1.73 compared to original conservation efficiency.