Studies On Regional Landscape Planning In Qinling Mountains

Most of mountain regions are extremely ecological sensitive and fragile. Tourism development and urbanization promoted the development of the local's economy, while contributing to habitat fragmentation, sharp decrease of wildlife distribution and population, as well as biodiversity crisis. Qinling mountains is one of biodiversity hotspots in china. The natural landscape and historic and culture heritage converged in the area and tourism developed rapidly. The contradiction between biodiversity conservation and rapid economy development intensified, which seriously affected the sustainable development of qinling mountains. Therefore, how to ascertain the appropriate development area to ensure economic development and minimum influence on ecological environment has been a significant research topic confronted by human being currently in order to coordinate the protection and development contradictions. So this paper using Qinling mountains as the research area, made an in-depth study from the regional scales of mountains to search a rational approach for biodiversity conservation and economic development contradictions. It also provided scientific guidance for sustainabilty development of Qinling mountains. Based on field surveys, RS and GIS technology and other analysis methods, the evaluation index system of biodiversity hotspots, climate suitability, visual resources, environmental sensitivity, settlement ecological land and local culture landscape was established. With qualitative and quantitative methods such as analytic hierarchy process(AHP), suitability analysis and expert scoring method et al., the characteristics and spatial distribution pattern of favorable climate period, visual resources, tourist resources, biodiversity hotspots and ecological environmental sensitivity was evaluated and ecological key areas were made clear in this paper. Furthermore, biodiversity conservation planning, flood control planning, settlement landscape planning, regional tourism planning and regional landscape planning scheme of Qinling mountains were programmed. The significant biodiversity conservation areas and various landscape scope as well as regional corridor system of Qinling mountains were identified. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows:1 There was significant differences in climate suitability period of Qinling. In general, the annual period of suitable climate decreased gradually from south and north to central and from east to west. The longest climate suitability period were seven months, covering an area of 11,242 km2 or 19.50% of the total area. The climate suitability period of 5 months has the largest area, with an area of 28,448 km2, occupying 49.35% of the total area, followed by 6 months climate suitability period. Annual climate unsuitable area was located in Taibaishan hilly regions with an area of 86 km2, which is characteristic of less than 0.5% of the region's total area.2 According to landscape visual quality analysis of Qinling mountains, the excellent grade visual resources area mainly distributed in high altitude area with an area 22,745 km2, Good level visual resources area covering 22,264 km2 of study area. All of them occupied 77.83% the total area, which imply landscape visual resources is generally good in Qinling mountains.3 There was an area of 13,949 km2 of biodiversity hotspots in Qinling mountains which mainly distributed in the mid-west region of qinling mountains. The existing natural reserves only covered 33.94% of the biodiversity hotspots,yet an area of 9,817 km2 biodiversity hotspots beyond the reserves. Currently the reserve system in Qinling mountains is hard to provide fully effective protection for biodiversity hotspots.4 The extremely sensitive and highly sensitive area of soil erosion in Qinling mountains took up 8,390 km2 and 4,437 km2 respectively, All of them mainly distributed in lower elevations with seriously human disturbance activities. Whereas the slightly sensitive and non-sensitive erosion areas mainly distributed in the south and north sides of Qinling ridge.5 According to flood control sensitivity analysis, the extremely flood control sensitive area mainly distributed along Hanjiang riverside which covered 534 km2 in south Qinling mountains (once flood per 10 years).There was less effect of flood in the north piedmont of Qinling mountains because of higher ground.6 The very suitable and suitable land for settlements covered 301.54 km2 and 7.29 km2 respectively, accounting for only 0.53% of the study area. Which mainly distributed in some area of counties such as Shangluo, Luonan, Danfeng, Shan Yang, Hanyin, Xunyng et.al.. There were 200.3 km2 of built settlement in Qinling mountains, but only 65.79 km2 of them distributed in the very suitable and suitable zone, accounting for 32.84% of built settlements. There was an area of 134.51 km2 of built area beyond the suitable zone risking ecological safety and 243 km2 suitable land can be used for the construction of settlements.7 The main tourism resources in Qinling mountains had a space distribution characteristic of a "three zones nine points" and embodied the structure characteristics that natural tourism resources with priority and supplemented by culture tourism resources as well as natural and humanistic landscape interacted each other.8 Altogether 9 biodiversity habitat corridors,12 green river corridors,137 small towns,30 general towns,21 center towns,15 large towns, five tourism development axises were proposed in the regional landscape planning schemes. These schemes played an important role in coordinating the relationship between biodiversity protection and economic development effectively in Qinling mountains.