Study on temporal and spatial changes of forest resources in Jiangsu Province in recent thirty years

Abstract

This study takes Jiangsu Province, and it chooses multi- source observation data and basic geographical information data as basic data, makes use of forest land's data in the sub-regional data, selects the forest land's monitoring indicators, and explores into the temporal and spatial changes of forests in Jiangsu Province from multiple perspectives, including temporal distribution of forests, topographical factors, spatial patterns, etc. The study chooses 1980-2010 as the monitoring time and draws the following conclusions: (1) The forest land is mainly distributed in the southwestern part and northern part of Jiangsu Province. The forest resources are quite abundant in the southern part of Yangtze River area, while the forests are in lack in the southwestern cities, such as Nantong, Taizhou, Yancheng, etc. (2) The changes of forest land in Jiangsu Province can be divided into three periods: 1980-1995 is the stage of gradual reduction. 1995-2005 is the stage of gradual increase. 2005-2010 is the stage of rapid reduction. The changes mainly take place in the areas whose elevation is lower than 60m and the slope is lower than 12°. (3) The forest resources in Jiangsu Province basically maintain the trend of contiguous distribution, displaying the phenomena of fragmentation to a certain degree. In recent thirty years, the overall contiguousness degree of forests has reduced to a certain extent. The fragmentation degree increases. Landscape patch also tends to become fragmented from concentrated gradually.