Priority Ordination And Evaluation For Conservation Of Forest Compartments In Nature Reserve

Forest compartment has been the third-level division unit for forest management in the forest resources statistical and management system, moreover, it has been regarded as one of important levels or units for management and conservation division in most of nature reserves. Therefore, priority ordination and evaluation for conservation on the scale of forest compartments in nature reserve would be realized to have certain practical or immediate significance to the catalogue and monitering of ecosysyems in nature reserves, thus it would be an effective way to increase intensive level of management and conservation of nature reserve. In view of the above, an approach for evaluating species diversity on the scale of forest compartments, based on the data of plot survey and continuous forest inventory, was put forward in this paper. Furthermore, an evaluation framework for priority conservation of forest compartment was provided, which consisted of species diversity, landscape type diversity and forest resource for evaluating each compartment in Lianhua Mountains. Each compartment comprehensive value, species diversity value, landscape type diversity value and forest resource value were evaluated by the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Meanwhile, the compartments were classified by the cluster analysis of the three essential values, which have greatly strengthened the objectivity of conclusion and evaluation. A comparison was applied to the division by cluster analysis and the initial functional division in Lianhua Monutains. The result indicated as follows:1. Species diversity indexes of tree layer and shrub layer based on Importance Value (IV) had more ecological significance than other measure criteria, and standard error was cut down. Species diversity indexes of herb layer among communities based on IV had the same change trend with that of coverage. Margalef index and Menhinick index of tree layer had the closest relation to measurements, and Alatalo index of both shrub layer and tree layer had the closest relation to measurementsï¼›Shannon-Wiener index of shrub layer based on IV showed higher diversity level than others, Shannon-Wiener index of herb layer based on coverage showed higher than that on IV. With the same community type, the species diversity index showed that shrub layer had the most diversity in species. 2. Birches forest, firs forest, shrubs forest were the matrix landscape in Lianhua Mountains. Some forest compartments including No.1,2,3,4,5,12,16 were dominated by shrub forest, others were dominated by birches or firs, Ratio of Nonforest Land Area in No.1,2,3,4,5,11 compartments was higher than others. Patch fragmentation index of forest was higher than that of shrub, afforestation land, suitable forest land, woodland in No.1,2,3,5 compartments. For No.13,14,15 compartments without human disturbance, the isolation degree of forest land was lower than nonforest land, suitable forest land, while that of afforestation was the lowest.3. The value of landscape type diversity indexes (including diversity index, evenness index, fragmentation index), showed that diversity value (including Simpson index ;Shannon-Wiener index) were drametical in No.5 compartment, while that of No.15 were the lowest. Evenness value in No.3 was the lowest . Both diversity value and evenness value in No.4,5,9,10,11,14 were comparatively higher than that of others. Fragmentation index indicated that the landscape fragmentation degree in No.1,8,13,14,16 was relatively serious.4. In addition, the forest resource criteria revealed the characteristics on the scale of forest compartment. The overall forest resource and forest coverage (FC) in No.7,9,13,15 were better than others. For No.1,2 compartments with high Ratio of Suitable Land, the forest area would have potential to be increased in forest coverage and ratio of forest land area. Ratio of forest area in No.3,16, was low among the compartments. According to the age structure of stand, the forest in No.1,2,3,4,9 had been primarily made up of young and half-ma...