Short-term Impacts Of Tourism Trampling On Shangri-la Alpine Meadow Vegetation

Shangri-la located in northwest of Yunnan province, where is of high biodiversity conservation value, and is also a popular summer ecotourism destination. Alpine meadow is an important ecotourism resource in Shangri-la, however, as ecotourism flourishing the tourist trampling influence on alpine meadow is increasing. Thus, investigating the way that trampling influence appear and identifying meadow responding to tourist trampling is an important issue both to preserve the biodiversity of alpine meadow and to achieve sustainable development of ecotourism in Shangri-la.This thesis focused on the impacts of summer tourist trampling on alpine meadow vegetation community in Shangri-la. Firstly, a survey approach was used to determine the characters of the alpine meadow. Then an experimental trampling which used a standardized methodology was conducted to identify the impacts of tourist trampling on the meadow. Based on experimental data the resistance and resilience of the meadow to tourist trampling were discussed as well.To analyze tourist trampling impacts on the meadow, seven questions were addressed:(1) How does the community cover (including average cover and species cover homogenization) change with the increasing of trampling intensity?(2) How does the community height (including average height and species height homogenization) change with the increasing of trampling intensity?(3) How does the species richness change with the increasing of trampling intensity?(4) Does the dominant species’SDR change with the increasing of trampling intensity?(5) Does the SDR of species that appeared with human beings change with the increasing of trampling intensity?(6) How does the synthetic influence of trampling on community change with the increasing of trampling intensity? And,(7) How about the relationship between trampling intensity and RVC, and what are characteristics of the resistance and resilience of the meadow community? Based on experimental data and questions addressed above, following vegetation indexes were considered (1) relative vegetation cover (RVC) and standard deviation of meadow plants cover (cover STD);(2) vegetation average height (Height) and standard deviation of height (Height STD);(3) species richness (the number of plant species in meadow);(4) the summed dominance ratio (SDR) of dominant species in meadow plant community;(5) the SDR of species that appear with human beings, and (6) vegetation synthesize index (VSI) that compound RVC change, height change and species richness change. Index (1) and (2) were used to discuss the change of vegetation appearance after trampling. Index of (3),(4) and (5) were used to analyze the change of the composition of vegetation species after trampling, and the index of VSI was used to reflect the integrated impacts of tourist trampling on meadow vegetation.The resistance was discussed based on the relationship model between trampling intensities and RVC, which was modeled by the approach of GM (1,1), combining with one-way ANOVA of RVC two weeks after trampling. And the resilience was assessed by the recover degree of RVC that compared the RVC of two month after trampling with the RVC of one week after trampling.The following preliminary conclusions were obtained.(1) Vegetation average cover and the standard deviation of species cover reduced with the increasing of trampling intensity, while vegetation cover recovered quickly, it’s almost recovered completely two months after trampling.(2) Vegetation average height and standard deviation of species height reduced with the increasing of trampling intensity. Contrary to vegetation cover, the height recovered slowly, and the horizontal structure of the community was continually to be impacted even two months after trampling.(3) The fluctuation of species richness of meadow vegetation reflected the seasonal variation rather than the impact of trampling.(4) The SDR of dominant species decreased with the increasing of trampling intensity, and increased over time, while the SDR of main auxiliary species increased with the increasing of trampling intensity and decreased over time.(5) The SDR of species that appear with human beings increased with the increasing of trampling intensity, under high trampling intensity, they even replaced dominant species or became main auxiliary species in meadow community.(6) The integrated impact of trampling on meadow vegetation was still significant even two months after trampling.(7) There were two community responding thresholds to trampling. The first threshold occurred when vegetation cover reduced20%which caused by the tramping intensity of217passes, and the second one occurred when vegetation cover reduced35.5%which caused by682passes. If the reduction of vegetation cover was under the first threshold in summer, the appearance of plant community (only height and cover) would not be changed significantly. Community relative cover lost27%compared with control trail one week after trampling, and it recovered75%two months after trampling.