Valuation Of Typical Steppe Ecosystem In Yunwu Mountain National Nature Reserve

As an important part of the natural ecological asset in China, grasslands have beenseverely destructed by the excessively irrational use along with the rapidly growingeconomics. Today people have fully noticed the importance of grasslands, and a series ofprojects have been constructed to do the protection and rational utilization of the grasslandresources.Based on the emergy value that created by a famous ecologist named Odum, emergyanalysis theory could transform various energys of ecosystem or eco-economic system intoemergy values with a same standard by using the emergy transformity. And through thismdthod, people can further measure a variety of ecological flows, includeing energy andmaterials flow, monetary flow, population flow, information flow, and so on, and obtain aseries of comprehensive analysis indicators of the emergy value, and thus finallyquantitatively analyze the structure and function characteristics and ecological economicbenefits for the system evaluation.This paper will focuse on the yearly valuation in a span of31years (1982-2013) oftypical steppe ecosystem in Yunwu Mountain National Nature Reserve by using theemergy analysis theory after the enclosure management. And the framework of emergymethod was justified according to the actual situation to explore the feasibility of themethod in valuating natural resources. This paper aims to clarify the value and mainrecycling mode in energy and material flowing of grassland ecosystem, and to furtherenhance the construction and management of grassland ecosystem.The main results were as follows:There was a large rise in the value of typical steppe ecosystem in Yunwu MountainNational Natural Reserve since the enclosure management had being taken in1982. Totalecosystem value was3.61billion dollars which included0.38billion dollars in ecosystemservice valuation and was far higher than the initial valuation of0.33billion dollars, indicating a significant improvement due to the enclosure management.The value of inputs into grassland ecosystem fluctuated around a line with theabsence of inputs before2011. Due to the social economic input, the input value had asignificant increase in grassland ecosystem. It reached at1.70×1019sej in2013, which wasfar higher than0.58×1019sej in2010.The enclosure managenment made the emergy value of output from the grasslandecosystem increase yearly, peaking at9.56×1019sej in1996, and then declined withdifferent speeds until2010. Up to now, social economic inputs beginning at2011havemade an apparent and significant increase with a value of1.02×1019sej to the output valueof emergy and total value of the grassland ecosystem.According to the results mentioned above, the enclosure management with a span ofmore than thirty years has increased the value of grassland ecosystem significantly. Withthe inputs of both natural resources and social economics, the typical steppe in YunwuMountain has developed very well and is turning into a more energetic ecosystem.