关键词: 生物多样性保护, 自然保护区, 地理分布

Abstract

To protect its huge biodiversity, China has established 2,640 nature reserves, including 318 terrestrial national nature reserves, covering ~15% of its landmass. It is necessary to characterize the geographical distribution of these nature reserves along natural and socio-economic gradients before evaluating their effectiveness in conserving China’s biodiversity. We did this using geographic information system (GIS) analysis. The results show that, the coverage of nature reserves is unbalanced across China. In total, there are 2,150 counties (91% of the total) with <10% coverage of nature reserves, of which 150 have <6% coverage and 1,726 (73%) have no nature reserves at all. A higher coverage of nature reserves tends to occur in regions of higher elevation, lower temperature, less precipitation, and less vegetation productivity. Nature reserves tend to be established therefore at high and cold locations in poor remote areas where human activities (including farming) are greatly reduced. In contrast, in warm humid and productive areas for farming and horticulture, nature reserve coverage is relatively low.

Key words: biodiversity conservation, nature reserves, geographical distribution