| The protection based on ecosystem, an effective way to prevent the loss of biodiversity, is a hot topic in the field of conservation biology. To provide the basis for the development of ecosystem protection plan, researchers have been dedicated to working over the ecosystem conservation priority by developing quantitative criteria and methods for local, regional and global level ecosystem protection, which is an important basis for ecosystem conservation plan. The first step for assessing ecosystem conservation priority is properly defined and classified ecosystem as unit of analysis. Then, we select criteria and methods that the conservation priority can be assessed quantitatively. Finally, based on the above outcomes, the ecosystem conservation priority can be ranked in low, moderate, and high priority. The criteria used for assessment are grouped into four classes:ecosystem area loss rate, ecosystem extent (area), ecosystem representativeness and species-level ecosystem attributes. In this paper, we select the forest ecosystem as target to show the process for ecosystem conservation priority assessment. The vegetation digital map in 1980s, land-use map in 2010, national nature reserve map, vegetation regionalization and national key protected wild animals are used to evaluate the forest ecosystem conservation priority by overlying, reclassing, normalizing and quantitative assessing in GIS. The main results are as follows:(1) In the past 30 years, there is a drastically decrease in the area of nature forest ecosystem in China. The area of forest was 1513929.85km2 in 1980s, while reduced to 938676.51km2 in the year of 2010. A total area of forest ecosystems reduced by 575253.34km2 which account for more than 38% of its area. The reduced ratio of temperate coniferous forests is 59.3%, which are mainly distributed in Northern China; the land-use of there has changed to other land type. The reduced ratio of subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest is 12.9% which is the least one among all types of forest.(2) Although China has established 2,669 nature reserves, including 428 national nature reserves until 2014. The area of all types of nature reserves is 1463100 km2, including the area of national nature reserves is 946600 km2, which account for 15.24% and 9.7% of total area of China, respectively, there are still 42 kinds of forest ecosystem that haven’t been protected by national nature reserves. The protected area of forest ecosystem account for 8.49% of all forest, which is so small as not enough to conserve all ecosystem types.(3) Foreste ecosystem is classified into 202 types according to its characteristic, among which, there are 25 types are setted priority ranking in high,113 types ranking in moderate and 64 types ranking in low. The ratio to the total area of China for forest ecosystems ranking in high, moderate and low priority is 6.47%,2.56%, and 0.27%. The ratio of forest ecosystem ranking in high is the largest one, which distribute from south to north of China. The number of forest ecosystem types ranking in moderate is the most one, but the area is less than the ones ranking in high which concentrate in south-western of China. The ratio of forest ecosystem ranking in low is the smallest among three grades, which distribute sporadically in north-eastern and western of China. Our results show that forest ecosystem need be protected in order to prevent further loss.(4) The ratio of protected area by national nature reserves for forest ecosystems ranking in high, moderate, and low priority level is 5.36%,12.66%, and 27.41%, respectively. It estimates by GAP analysis that the conservation GAP mainly distribute in the northeast of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the north of Heilongjiang Province, Yunnan Province, Guangxi Province and eastern coastal areas. Based on the spatial pattern for the national nature reserves, we can expand and update these around forest ecosystem less protected in order to conserve more ecosystem, or propose new national nature reserves. |
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