Abstract:

Largescale water conservancy and hydropower projects disturbance often result in the significant changes in land use.The paper aims to study the impact of disturbance on the landscape and ecological effects of landscape restoration.The construction of various facilities and changes of land use bring about significant changes in landscape at the disturbed area of largescale water conservancy and hydropower project.Landscape changes and landscape effects of engineering construction and ecological restoration,taking Xiangjiaba largescale water conservancy and hydropower project as an example,were evaluated through field investigation and analysis of the aerial photography images of the disturbed area during three different periods—no disturbance (2004),largescale disturbance (2006~2007) and largescale restoration (2008).The integrate landscape characteristics of different periods,including changes in Landscape pattern,patch number,patch area, patch shape and patch fragmentation,were quantitatively analyzed using the landscape fragmentation index,diversity index,dominance degree and shape index.The results showed that the construction of water conservancy and hydropower project significantly reduced landscape area of woodland, shrub,grassland and farmland in the disturbed area.The increasing land use in the project greatly intensified the degree of landscape fragmentation and promoted landscape diversity.The landscape area of woodland, shrub and grassland were increased with the artificial ecological restoration.However,the landscape fragmentation was still high in the disturbed area. Some suggestions were put forward from landscape ecology to improve the ecological restoration in the disturbed area of Xiangjiaba largescale water conservancy and hydropower project.The future ecological restoration should not only stress on the scientific design of landscape function and landscape pattern,but also on the construction of landscape connectivity,community structure and biodiversity