Analysis And Evaluation Of Village Human Habitat Forest Based On Tree Canopy Cover

Village habitat forest construction is one of important parts of new rural ecologicalconstruction in China, which is considered to be an efficient way to solve problems of ruralecological environment. In this paper, we take66villages in LingHe town, Anqiu city,Shandong province as the area to be studied, focus on the tree canopy coverage, and thenanalyse and evaluate structures and characteristics of habitat forests, current quality of habitatforests, and distribution of possible tree canopy cover, based on the aerial image. Meanwhile,based on the amount and distribution of possible tree canopy cover, and also the results ofsurvey on residents’ demands, the layout optimization of habitat forests can be devired. Theresearch shows that:(1) Structure and characteristics of habitat forests in LingheThe studied area is plain agricultural area, with rich plant species in village habitat forests,which consist of72species in total, belonging to38families and62genera. The habitat forestsare constituted mainly with arbors, and bushes come second, while flowers and vines areseldom. Dominating tree species include Poplar, Persimmon, Paulownia, Cherry, Robiniapseudoacacia, Toona, Pomegranate, Styphnolobium, Armeniaca, Lagerstroemia indica L., etc.,most of which are productive-and-ecological, economical, or ornamental tree species, and themost are productive-and-ecological species. The diversity of habitat forests is affected by thearea of administrative villages, which varies among villages. After weighting the area, theSimpson ecological dominance index, Pielou evenness index, and Shannon-Wiener index showthe same pattern, that Xiehu is the highest, while Dongbingmaying is the lowest;(2) Analysis and evaluation of current states of habitat forestsThe studied area has the area of existing tree canopy cover1088.15hm2, the tree canopycoverage17.12%. At the level of patch size structure, huge canopy cover patches aredominating in area, which are mainly patches of productive and ecological forest outside residential area; small and medium-sized patches are dominating in amount, and most of whichare distributed in residential area and roadside, with high landscape fragmentation;The evaluation of tree canopy cover in the unit of administrative village shows that,among66administrative villages, only24villages have the tree canopy coverage higher than17.12%, the average level in the town. The tree canopy coverage of the town is mainly medium,with the proportion of36.36%, in all administrative villages, followed by very low coverageand low coverage, with the proportions of21.21%and18.18%, respectively, and high coverageis the least, making up only7.58%of the total. Therefore, villages in Linghe have great roomfor improvement.The area of tree canopy cover by different tree species varies. Poplar reaches11.97%andhas the highest canopy coverage, while Berberis is the lowest with less than0.01%canopycoverage. Village habitat forest species with high canopy coverage include Poplar, Paulownia,Acacia, Malus, etc., which are mostly productive and economic tree species.(3) Analysis of distribution of possible tree canopy coverIn theory, the increasable area of possible tree canopy cover is190.51hm2, including tidalflats, bare earth, grassland and other unused land. The theoretical maximum of possible treecanopy cover is20.12%. After10percentage deduction for landscape diversity protection, thepractically increasable area of possible tree canopy cover of the4aforementioned types of landuse is33.11hm2,34.86hm2,59.46hm2nad44.03hm2respectively, and the accumulativeexisting tree canopy coverage has the maximum of19.82%, while the current coverage is17.12%. Among types of land use, patches of tidal flats have the largest amount of increasablearea, which shows that, although waterside forest has fragmented canopy cover currently, it hasmost potential of forming continuous cover.The possible tree canopy cover of different administrative villages varies greatly, amongwhich Dalu has the largest area of possible tree canopy cover, Liugou has the smallest, and theaverage area is3.12hm2. At the point of ecological land use types that can convert to possible tree canopy cover, the most grassland is distributed in Laobingmaying, bare earth inGuanqianbu, tidal flats in Dalu, and unused land in Xiaogou.(4) Residents’ demands and suggestions on optimizationThe result of the survey on residents’ demands shows that, villagers have strong demandson village habitat forest construction, since80%of villagers have the demands. Amongdemands, the demand for roadside forest is the strongest, with support by96%of villagers,followed by waterside forest, with92%support rate, while the demand for garden forest is theweakest, with30%support rate.At the point of optimization on spatial layout, considering the process of conversion frompossible to existing canopy cover in future, the order of optimization is based on residents’demands, and type, amount, and distribution characteristic of possible tree canopy cover. Landuse types in residential area should have first priority, since it has the most potential ofconversion, with increasable area of possible tree canopy cover10.46hm2, tidal flats comesecond, with66.05hm2, followed by grassland and bare earth, with73.11hm2; unused landcomes the last, with48.92hm2, since it is mostly industrial and mining area, with the highestdifficulty of conversion, and its conversion usually needs engineering measures.