Abstract
Anthropogenic landscape alteration is rather common in many protected areas (PAs), jeopardizing the efficacy of PAs conservation. However, the general consensus is that PAs still remain effective in habitat conservation. To assess the efficacy of landscape-level conservation, we examined landscape alterations in the Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve (CMBR), which was established in 1960 as a “flagship” protected area in China. Based on analyses of high-resolution satellite images and data of forest inventory, field survey and interview, we developed two new indexes to assess the efficacy of landscape conservation, i.e. the quality index of protected landscape and the interference index of anthropogenic landscape. From 1993 to 2012, the quality index increased from 74.48 to 75.50, and the interference index decreased from 0.49 to 0.06, suggesting that the overall quality of protected landscape improved and the degree of anthropogenic interference decreased in CMBR. The increase in landscape quality was mainly due to the progressive vegetation recovery of previous cutover land in the windthrow area, the cease of the use of the cultivated land, and the amelioration of spatial pattern of protected landscape. We conclude that the current landscape conservation methods used in CMBR are effective, and the method we developed has the potential to be used to assess the efficacy of landscape-level conservation in nature reserves worldwide.
Highlights
Habitat reduction and fragmentation are the leading causes of biodiversity loss worldwide [1,2], and establishing protected areas (PAs) or natural reserves is the principal defense [3,4,5]
The natural forest area increased from 168,693.0 ha to 170,898.4 ha, and the increased area was mainly transformed from sparse forest (1,555.1 ha) and cutover land (1,300.9 ha; Table S4)
The area of sparse forest in the buffer zone, and the transition area increased by 68.6% and 64.9%, respectively; the area of the natural grassland in the transition area increased by 10.1% (Table S3)
Summary
Habitat reduction and fragmentation are the leading causes of biodiversity loss worldwide [1,2], and establishing protected areas (PAs) or natural reserves is the principal defense [3,4,5]. In PAs, two types of landscape are identified, i.e. protected landscape and anthropogenically interfered landscape (thereafter referred to as ‘‘interfered landscape’’) [7,8]. The former refers mainly to natural landscape and includes some artificial landscape that is beneficial to wildlife [8]. The latter is frequently interfered by human activities that often disturb and damage natural ecosystems and wildlife habitats [9]. It is highly necessary to examine changes in the quality of protected landscape and the degree of anthropogenic interference to assess the efficacy of landscape-level conservation in nature reserves [16,17,18]
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