Tree Planting:How Fast Can It Accelerate Post-fire Forest Restoration?——A Case Study in Northern Da Hinggan Mountains,China

In 1987,a catastrophic fire burned over 1330000 ha in the densely forested area of the Da Hinggan Mountains in the northeastern China.After the fire,intensive management including burned trunk harvesting and coniferous tree planting had been conducted to accelerate forest restoration.To study the long term effect of these activities on forest recovery,we used a simulation modeling approach to study long-term(300 years) forest dynamics under current planting and natural regeneration scenarios.Results indicate that under tree planting scenario in the severely burned area,the dominant species Dahurian larch(Larix gmelinii) can reach pre-fire level(60% of the area) within 20 years and the maximum abundance can reach nearly 90% within 100 years.While under natural regeneration scenario,it needs about 250 years to reach its pre-fire level.From the perspective of timber production,tree planting can bring twice as much timber volume as that under natural regeneration within 300 years,which is the average longevity of L.gmelinii.It needs about 70 years to reach the timber volume of pre-fire level under the planting scenario,whereas it requires at least 250 years to reach the timber volume of pre-fire level under natural regeneration scenario.Another dominant species Asian White birch(Betula platyphylla) responded negatively to the planting of coniferous species.In general,tree planting of coniferous species after fire can greatly accelerate forest restoration in terms of species abundance and target timber volume,with desirable ecological and economic returns.

Rocky Desertification Risk Zone Delineation in Karst Plateau Area:A Case Study in Puding County,Guizhou Province

Karst rocky desertification is a geo-ecological problem in Southwest China. The rocky desertification risk zone delineation could be used as a guide for the regional and hierarchical rocky desertification management and prevention. We chose the middle and lower reaches of the Houzhai underground basin on the karst plateau in Puding County, Guizhou Province, China as the study area and selected land use type, elevation, slope, aspect, lithology and settlement buffer as the main driving factors of the rocky desertification. The potential risk of rocky desertification was quantifed with the factor-weights union method and statistical analysis method. Five grades of rocky desertification risk were delineated based on Geographic Information System. The extremely low, low, moderate, high and extremely high rocky desertification risk zones accounted for 5.01%, 44.17%, 33.92%, 15.59% and 1.30%, respectively. As a whole, the rocky desertification risk level was moderate because the area of low and moderate rocky desertification risk zones occupied 78.09% of the study area. However, more than half of the area （about 50.81%） was predicted to have moderate rocky desertification risk and above, indicating that the study area was subject to rocky desertification. Rocky desertification risk was higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest of the study area. Distinct differences in the distribution of rocky desertification risk zones corresponding to different factors have been found.

Responses of Tree Species to Climate Warming at Different Spatial Scales

Tree species respond to climate change at multiple scales,such as species physiological response at fine scale and species distribution (quantified by percent area) at broader spatial scale.At a given spatial scale,species physiological response and distribution can be correlated positively or negatively.The consistency of such correlation relationships at different spatial scales determines whether species responses derived from local scales can be extrapo-lated to broader spatial scales.In this study,we used a coupled modeling approach that coupled a plot-level ecosystem process model (LINKAGES) with a spatially explicit landscape model (LANDIS).We investigated species physio-logical responses and distribution responses to climate warming at the local,zonal and landscape scales respectively,and examined how species physiological response and distribution correlated at each corresponding scale and whether the correlations were consistent among these scales.The results indicate that for zonal and warming-sensitive species,the correlations between species physiological response and distribution are consistent at these spatial scales,and therefore the research results of vegetation response to climate warming at the local scale can be extrapolated to the zonal and landscape scales.By contrast,for zonal and warming-insensitive species the correlations among different spatial scales are consistent at some spatial scales but at other scales.The results also suggest that the results of azonal species at the local scale near their distribution boundaries can not be extrapolated simply to broader scales due to stronger responses to climate warming in those boundary regions.