Comparative Study On The Quality Of The Collective And Household Forest

After the "three fixes" policy reassigned forest use rights to households in the 1980s, most community forests in Weixi County were allocated as household contract forest. Some smaller areas of forest surrounding community settlements were retained as collective forests managed by neighborhood groups. The aim of this study is to explore differences in forest quality under each of these management models, as well as trends in vegetation cover change under each management model over the past twenty years, in four villager groups in Kangpu Township of Weixi County. We conducted measurements of community composition and structure and gathered soil samples in 120 forest quadrats. Using these data, we conducted comparative analyses of indicators of biological diversity, biomass, and soil fertility in collective and household forests. We also analyzed trends of vegetation cover change using NDVI values for 1994,2000,2010, and 2014. We arrived at the following conclusions:1) Collective forests and household forests are similar in biodiversity. Pinus yunnanensis is the dominant species. The similarity index of the canopy layer is 77.92%.2) In collective forests, tree height and diameter at breast height are greater than in household forests, while shrub understory stem count is smaller. Total biomass calculated from quadrat measurements is higher in collective forests.3) Soil organic matter, total nitrogen, and available potassium are higher in collective forests than in household forests. A component analysis of eight soil indicators shows that soil fertility is higher in household forests than in collective forests.4) In each neighborhood, vegetation cover trends in collective and household forests are similar. Across different neighborhoods, collective and household forest vegetation cover show diverging trends, with smaller vegetation cover in collective than household forests.