Impacts of human activities on landscape patterns in the Ziwuling Mountains of the Loess Plateau

The forest landscape characteristics and landscape diversity of three functional regions in the Ziwuling Nature Reserve in Gansu Province were investigated.The results showed that the forest landscape of Labagoumen Nature Reserve was primarily covered by Quercus Liaotungensis forest and Populus davidiana forest.However,shrubland and non-woodland gradually became dominant landscape types in the nature reserve due to human disturbance.Among the three functional regions,the fragmentation degree of landscape in the core area was relatively lower,however,that in the buffer area was higher,and that in the transition area was the highest.The human disturbance was the main force to cause landscape heterogeneity and landscape pattern change.In this paper,the changes in forest landscape patterns in Ziwuling Mountain were analyzed by means of ILWIS GIS technique based on the 1∶25 000 scale of vegetation map.And the impacts of human activities on forest landscape patterns were studied by using buffer analysis method.The results showed that:(a) The landscape fragmentation in Ziwuling Mountain was to some extent related to the intensity of human activities.In the area with more human disturbance,the patch area was smaller,while in the area with less human disturbance,the patch area was relatively larger.The human activities greatly resulted in the landscape fragmentation.(b) The indices of landscape diversity showed little change with the increase of the distance from the selected disturbed area.Therefore natural factors are still the decisive ones to affect landscape patterns in this area.