Abstract:

With the number of nature reserves increasing and the protected area expanding,China's nature reserves also have many problems.Zonation unreasonable is one among them.Zonation largely determines the developing direction and management framework of nature reserves.It plays a vital role for the effective management of nature reserves.However,China pursued rescue protection strategies in a fairly long period of time.Inadequate theory,inappropriate zoning methods,lack of basic information brought  potential problems to nature reserves zoning.Now many nature reserves have reduction in biodiversity,community conflicts and other problems.Therefore,the use of scientific methods on nature reserve zoning is particularly necessary.Through data collection,field surveys,expert consultations,literature research,with the remote sensing and geographic information technology,using landscape ecology sourcesink system theory,this paper conducted functional zoning to Yaoluoping Nature Reserve.In landscape ecology,the “source” and “sink” are for ecological processes,the “source” refers to the landscape which can promote the development of ecological processes; “sink” landscapes are those that can prevent,delay the development of ecological processes landscape types.In accordance with the idea of biosphere reserves,zoning is a collar structure which from the inside to the outside can be divided into core zone,buffer zone and experimental zone.Species have least resistance to overcome in the core region,maximum resistance in experimental zone,and the resistance in buffer zone between the two.This paper selected the locations in Yaoluoping where protected species and endemic species widely distributed as “source”,selected the type of vegetation,vegetation cover,slope,terrain ruggedness as resistance layer of costs distance,used minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR) to create resistance surface,then graded the surface resistance layer with natural breakpoint method,ultimately determined the functional zoning Nature Reserve.Comparing the proposed zoning program and the existing zoning,the core area and buffer area expanded,the proportion rose to 38.46% and 29% from 17.2% and 23.9%,respectively; the experimental area ratio decreased from 58.9% to 32.54%; human activityintensive areas should be included in the experimental areas,which was conducive to strict partition management.For the future development of Yaoluoping Nature Reserve,this paper presented six recommendations including strict control of the scale of ecotourism,guiding the community's economic restructuring,strengthening ecological construction corridor,conducting publicity and education.These methods could be applied and extended to the related nature reserves