Determination of priority nature conservation areas and human disturbances in the Yangtze River Basin, China

CORC > 生态环境研究中心 > 中国科学院生态环境研究中心 > 城市与区域生态国家重点实验室

	Determination of priority nature conservation areas and human disturbances in the Yangtze River Basin, China
	Zhang Lu ; Xu Wei-hua ; Ouyang Zhi-yun ; Zhu Chun-quan
刊名	JOURNAL FOR NATURE CONSERVATION
	2014
卷号	22 期号:4 页码:326-336
关键词	Biodiversity Human impact MARXAN Priority area Systematic conservation planning
ISSN号	1617-1381
中文摘要	Because of limitation of manpower, funding, and land available in conservation, the problem of how to select essential regions to establish protection systems for biodiversity maintenance has been widely discussed. In an effort to address the problem, this study has aimed to select a set of priority areas and to determine their priority order by quantifying human disturbances for each area in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB). This basin covers 2.143 million km(2), or more than 20% of China's territory. The habitats of 627 indicator species were predicted as a proxy for biodiversity. A conservation planning tool, MARXAN, was used to determine the optimal set of planning units, and three different target scenarios were generated. In addition, under the assumption that if two areas have equal value for conservation, the one suffering more severe disturbance needs more urgent protection than the other, priority ranking analysis was carried out using a 6-12-1 BP artificial neural network. Then hierarchical cluster analysis was applied to the classifications of human disturbances to formulate more detailed conservation strategies. By integrating the degree of irreplaceability of each unit, expert experience, and mountain boundaries, 17 biodiversity priority areas containing 33,200 units over an area of 0.83 million km(2) were defined. These areas also protected 56% of 32 types of rare forest ecosystem and 76.4% of six types of rare grassland ecosystem on average. According to the evaluation of human impact, a priority order and five types of human disturbance areas were generated. Some protection gaps were also identified, such as the northern part of the Wuyi Mountains. Moreover, the determination of priority nature conservation areas on a large scale can be used to influence the building of a well-connected protection network in each individual area, so that effective genetic communication can occur between species or groups of species. Conservation decisions focusing on the dominant impact factors that are threatening biodiversity sustainability are required as well. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
WOS记录号	WOS:000338759300004
公开日期	2015-03-23
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://ir.rcees.ac.cn/handle/311016/9135]
专题	生态环境研究中心_城市与区域生态国家重点实验室
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Zhang Lu,Xu Wei-hua,Ouyang Zhi-yun,et al. Determination of priority nature conservation areas and human disturbances in the Yangtze River Basin, China[J]. JOURNAL FOR NATURE CONSERVATION,2014,22(4):326-336.
APA	Zhang Lu,Xu Wei-hua,Ouyang Zhi-yun,&Zhu Chun-quan.(2014).Determination of priority nature conservation areas and human disturbances in the Yangtze River Basin, China.JOURNAL FOR NATURE CONSERVATION,22(4),326-336.
MLA	Zhang Lu,et al."Determination of priority nature conservation areas and human disturbances in the Yangtze River Basin, China".JOURNAL FOR NATURE CONSERVATION 22.4(2014):326-336.