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Fragmentation of China’s landscape by roads and urban areas

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Abstract

China’s major paved road-ways (national roads, provincial roads, and county roads), railways and urban development are rapidly expanding. A likely consequence of this fast-paced growth is landscape fragmentation and disruption of ecological flows. In order to provide ecological information to infrastructure planners and environmental managers for use in landscape conservation, land-division from development must be measured. We used the effective-mesh-size (Meff) method to provide the first evaluation of the degree of landscape division in China, caused by paved roads, railways, and urban areas. Using Meff, we found that fragmentation by major transportation systems and urban areas in China varied widely, from the least-impacted west to the most impacted south and east of China. Almost all eastern provinces and counties, especially areas near big cities, have high levels of fragmentation. Several eastern-Chinese provinces and biogeographic regions have among the most severe landscape fragmentation in the world, while others are comparable to the least-developed areas of Europe and California. Threatened plant hotspots and areas with high mammal species diversity occurred in both highly fragmented and less fragmented areas, though future road development threatens already moderately divided landscapes. To conserve threatened biodiversity and landscapes, we recommend that national and regional planners in China consider existing land division before making decisions about further road development and improvement.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Evan Girvetz (University of Washington) for helpful advice for using the effective-mesh-size metric. We also thank Deb Niemeier (John Muir Institute of the Environment, UC Davis) and Jim Quinn (Information Center for the Environment, UC, Davis) for providing lab space. Finally, we thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for suggesting improvements to the article. This research was supported by UC Davis Sustainable Transportation Center faculty grant (A.M.B.), the Key Basic Research Development Program of China (“973” Program, 2007CB106804), the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities of MOE and SAFEA (“111” Program, China), and the MOE Innovative Team Program (China).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, 730030, People’s Republic of China

    Taian Li & Fengmin Li

  2. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, Road Ecology Center, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Fraser Shilling, Heidi Schott & Alison M. Berry

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    James Thorne & Ryan Boynton

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  1. Taian Li
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  2. Fraser Shilling
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  4. Fengmin Li
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Correspondence to Fraser Shilling or Fengmin Li.

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Li, T., Shilling, F., Thorne, J. et al. Fragmentation of China’s landscape by roads and urban areas. Landscape Ecol 25, 839–853 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-010-9461-6

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