Study On Deforestation In Modern Fujian And Zhejiang 1895-1949

Taking Fujian and Zhejiang in modern times(1895-1949)as the research object,this paper discusses the causes,results,countermeasures and thoughts of deforestation in modern Fujian and Zhejiang,and makes a comparative analysis within and outside the region,in order to be beneficial to today’s forest management and ecological civilization construction.Modern times was the most violent period of deforestation in Fujian and Zhejiang.Social transformation,industrial and agricultural reform and environmental chaos made deforestation complex in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.The developed trade of forest products is one of the main driving forces of deforestation in Fujian and Zhejiang in modern times.The export of wood,firewood,camphor and charcoal in Fujian often ranks in the forefront of the country,while the price oriented external market demand and supply wastes a lot of forest resources.Driven by economic interests,the expansion of cash crops such as tung tree,tea oil tree and tea tree has cleared a large amount of forest land and increased the inducement of environmental problems;The import and use of chemical fertilizers have reduced the further promotion of deforestation in coastal areas to a certain extent.In modern Fujian and Zhejiang,in addition to the continuous consumption of forests by old industries such as tea making,brick and tile making,porcelain making and alum making,new industries such as coal mining,matches and paper making also showed great "potential" to consume forests,which was very easy to cause fragmentation of forests.In addition to "clearing mountains and clearing vegetation" and consuming wood such as sleepers,bridges,culverts,ditches and electric poles,transportation and telecommunications construction also exert an impact on deforestation by facilitating deforestation path and shortening market transaction distance,and even related to people’s afforestation enthusiasm.The influence of war environment on modern deforestation in Fujian and Zhejiang may be underestimated,especially the plundering of forests in the occupied area of Zhejiang by the Japanese army and the destruction of forests in the local and revolutionary base areas by the Kuomintang garrison during the all-round war of resistance against Japan;The deforestation of war immigrants is short and concentrated,which is very easy to collapse the local ecology.According to the calculation,in the past 55 years,the forest area of Fujian Province and Zhejiang Province has decreased by more than 3500 square kilometers,and the forest coverage rate has decreased by more than 3.5%.This led to the imbalance of forest ecosystem in Fujian and Zhejiang in modern times,frequent floods,and more frequency,scope and destructive power than ever before;Loss of vegetation protection in mountainous areas,serious soil erosion and erosion,soil erosion and river siltation,threatening the safety of cities,shipping and farmland;Forest quality is declining,biodiversity is decreasing,and biological habitats are increasingly fragmented.In order to improve the environment,or to maintain survival and forestry development,the governments and people of modern Fujian and Zhejiang made efforts in afforestation and forest protection,and achieved certain results,but failed to stop the trend of continuous forest reduction.It should be noted that forest product trade,industrial development,war and other factors,environmental degradation and forest protection are interrelated and restrict each other,depending on "the comprehensive impact of various conditions and the intersection in time and space".Economic conditions often work in synergy with political forces and subjective will to produce forest cover change.Furthermore,under the nature of semi colonial and semi feudal society,corrupt local governments are unable to develop the economy to change the backward face,resulting in local economic development and farmers’ survival can only rely more on deforestation.Compared with other regions in the world with the same latitude,the same time period and the same development stage,the deforestation theories such as commercial logging,agricultural expansion,cash crop transformation,infrastructure construction and immigrant land clearing proved by numerous studies have certain applicability to the deforestation in modern Fujian and Zhejiang regions;However,the deforestation in modern Fujian and Zhejiang has its particularity,such as the export of fuel carbon,and the specific mechanism,occurrence process,results and response measures of various theories are different.