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Reforesting Landscapes pp 341–356Cite as

Forest Cover in China from 1949 to 2006

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Part of the book series: Landscape Series ((LAEC,volume 10))

Abstract

Forests are the largest and most important terrestrial ecosystem on Earth, and they provide fundamental goods and services on which the welfare of human society depends (Salim and Ullsten 1999). Man’s attitude towards forests is evolving with human civilization, ranging from venerating them as sacred for their immensity, fearing them due to dangers associated with forests, finding them as impediments to agricultural development, to seeing them as sources of economic value (Vogt et al. 2007). Laarman and Sedjo (1992) summarized the goods and services that forests can provide for human welfare in five categories: (1) protective services and influences, such as soil and water conservation, climate regulation as well as conservation of biodiversity; (2) educational and scientific services, where forests are used in research and teaching to obtain and transmit basic knowledge; (3) psycho-physiological influences, including tourism, recreation, inspiration for art, religion and philosophy, etc.; (4) consumption of plants, animals and derivatives, referring to timber, fuelwood, and other derived products from forests; (5) source of land and living space. Traditional forest practice is primarily aimed at extraction of direct and derivative products from forests to maximize economic gains, while other goods and services that forests offer are frequently not adequately valued. As a result, large areas of forests are cut for timber or fuelwood every year. In addition, due to the rapid growth of human population, large areas of forests are either converted to cropland for food production or to developed area.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partly supported by NASA grant NNX06AE28G. The authors thank Jackson Lord for help collecting provincial GDP data for China, and Limin Zhou for providing the NDVI data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Conghe Song

  2. Academy of Forest Inventory and Planning, State Forestry Administration, Beijing, P. R. China

    Yuxing Zhang

Authors
  1. Conghe Song
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  2. Yuxing Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Conghe Song .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ecology & the Environment (ATREE), Ashoka Trust for Research in, Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Bangalore, 560064, India

    Harini Nagendra

  2. Dept. Geography, University of Florida, Turlington Hall 3141, Gainesville, 32611-7315, U.S.A.

    Jane Southworth

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Song, C., Zhang, Y. (2009). Forest Cover in China from 1949 to 2006. In: Nagendra, H., Southworth, J. (eds) Reforesting Landscapes. Landscape Series, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9656-3_15

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