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On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China

The landscape patterns of plantations (PT) are the results of human disturbances on local vegetation, and in turn, differ greatly from natural forests (NF), since the patterns strongly influence the natural circulation of material and energy. There is a need to understand the differences of landscap...

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Autores principales: Yi, Yang, Shi, Mingchang, Liu, Chunjiang, Kang, Hongzhang, Wang, Bin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8069483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920283
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084000
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author Yi, Yang
Shi, Mingchang
Liu, Chunjiang
Kang, Hongzhang
Wang, Bin
author_facet Yi, Yang
Shi, Mingchang
Liu, Chunjiang
Kang, Hongzhang
Wang, Bin
author_sort Yi, Yang
collection PubMed
description The landscape patterns of plantations (PT) are the results of human disturbances on local vegetation, and in turn, differ greatly from natural forests (NF), since the patterns strongly influence the natural circulation of material and energy. There is a need to understand the differences of landscape patterns between PT and NF, to establish a near natural afforestation strategy. This study chose three typical silvicultural counties in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River as the research areas and compared the landscape patterns of NF and PT, with other land use types (grassland, GL; cropland, CL; shrubland, SL; orchard, OR; built-up land, BUL; bare land, BL; and water bodies, WB). The results revealed that the areas of PT accounted for 7.67%, 12.05%, and 18.97% of three counties, bigger than GL, OC, BUL, BL, and WB, as one of main land use types. The landscape patterns of PT (mean patch size between 2.06 to 6.05 ha) were more fragmented than NF (mean patch size between 5.83 to 53.91 ha). NF areas increased along the relative altitude gradient, from 0 to 2500 m, while PT areas peaked from 100–1000 m. The higher the altitude, the more typical the zonal distribution of PT, the more aggregated the NF. NF had significant negative correlations with BL, BUL, CL, PT, GL, and OC, which suggest that human activities had seriously interfered with NF. Although PT as an ecological protection strategy was increasing, the landscape patterns of PT were obviously different from NF. This may affect the material energy flow in the ecological environment. The results in the present study have great implications in the other regions in China and the relevant parts of the world where natural forests were heavily disturbed.
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spelling pubmed-80694832021-04-26 On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China Yi, Yang Shi, Mingchang Liu, Chunjiang Kang, Hongzhang Wang, Bin Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The landscape patterns of plantations (PT) are the results of human disturbances on local vegetation, and in turn, differ greatly from natural forests (NF), since the patterns strongly influence the natural circulation of material and energy. There is a need to understand the differences of landscape patterns between PT and NF, to establish a near natural afforestation strategy. This study chose three typical silvicultural counties in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River as the research areas and compared the landscape patterns of NF and PT, with other land use types (grassland, GL; cropland, CL; shrubland, SL; orchard, OR; built-up land, BUL; bare land, BL; and water bodies, WB). The results revealed that the areas of PT accounted for 7.67%, 12.05%, and 18.97% of three counties, bigger than GL, OC, BUL, BL, and WB, as one of main land use types. The landscape patterns of PT (mean patch size between 2.06 to 6.05 ha) were more fragmented than NF (mean patch size between 5.83 to 53.91 ha). NF areas increased along the relative altitude gradient, from 0 to 2500 m, while PT areas peaked from 100–1000 m. The higher the altitude, the more typical the zonal distribution of PT, the more aggregated the NF. NF had significant negative correlations with BL, BUL, CL, PT, GL, and OC, which suggest that human activities had seriously interfered with NF. Although PT as an ecological protection strategy was increasing, the landscape patterns of PT were obviously different from NF. This may affect the material energy flow in the ecological environment. The results in the present study have great implications in the other regions in China and the relevant parts of the world where natural forests were heavily disturbed. MDPI 2021-04-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8069483/ /pubmed/33920283 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084000 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Yi, Yang
Shi, Mingchang
Liu, Chunjiang
Kang, Hongzhang
Wang, Bin
On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title_full On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title_fullStr On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title_full_unstemmed On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title_short On Landscape Patterns in Typical Mountainous Counties Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River in China
title_sort on landscape patterns in typical mountainous counties middle reaches of the yangtze river in china
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8069483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920283
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084000
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