Type and evolution of landscapes of Nansha Islands

Abstract

Landscapes of the Nansha Islands may be divided into five types: tropical marine organism-breeding landscape of reef knoll like Zengmu Shoal, Wan’an Bank and so on; tropical marine organism-breeding landscape of atoll including all emerged reefs and most submerged reefs; tropical evergreen arbor-bush forest and phosphorous lime soil landscape of limesand Islets like Taiping Islet, Nanwei islet and so on; tropical shallow sea marine organism-breeding landscape of southern continental shelf; tropical oceanic and deep-sea marine organism landscape in middle and north parts of the Nansha Islands area. These five landscape types may be also summed up as two categories, one is tropical sea landscape including those in shallow and deep sea, the other is tropical coral reef landscape including those of reef knoll, atoll and limesand islet. This paper outlines the evolutional model of landscapes of the Nansha Islands. The distribution and evolution of landscape types are related with palaeogeography and modern environmental conditions. The former shallow sea of the Nansha islands was coastal zone in the Late Pleistocene epoch. Deep sea is evolved from shallow sea due to long and slow subsidence of crust. Modern coral reefs develop on old reef top of the Late pleistocene epoch or on baserock of continental shelf in the Holocene due to the rise of sea level in postglacial. Limesand islet is in the peak of developmental stage.