Changes in the spatial and temporal pattern of natural forest cover on Hainan Island from the 1950s to the 2010s：implications for natural forest conservation and management
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Soil Science
- Keywords
- Natural forest cover, Dynamic change, Hainan Island, Forest fragmentation, Conservation strategies
- Copyright
- © 2017 Lin et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Changes in the spatial and temporal pattern of natural forest cover on Hainan Island from the 1950s to the 2010s：implications for natural forest conservation and management. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2884v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2884v1
Abstract
The study of the past, present, and future state and dynamics of the tropical natural forest cover (NFC) might help to better understand the pattern of deforestation and fragmentation as well as the influence of social and natural processes. The obtained information will support the development of effective conservation policies and strategies. In the present study, we used historical data of the road network, topography, and climatic productivity to reconstruct NFC maps of Hainan Island, China, from the 1950s to the 2010s, using the random forest algorithm. We investigated the spatial and temporal patterns of NFC change from the 1950s to the 2010s and found that it was highly dynamic in both space and time. Our data showed that grid cells with low NFC were more vulnerable to NFC decrease, suggesting that conservation actions regarding natural forests need to focus on regions with low NFC and high ecological value. We also identified the hot-spots of NFC change, which provides insights into the dynamic changes of natural forests over time.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Supplementary Materials
Appendix 1 Description of obtaining the NFC in 1975 from 93 topographical maps
Appendix 2 Description of the field investigation for estimating the accuracy of natural forest distribution
Appendix 3 The sources of historical road network maps and road levels
Appendix 4 Description of the measure of four road-related indicators
Appendix 5 Comparing the predictive performances of four model techniques
Appendix 6 Overlaying the distribution of NFC with the road network in four pattern predictive performances of four model techniques