Forest of the Great Khingan

    The Great Khingan Mountains is located in northeast China, and it contains the largest state-owned forest with a total area of 8.46 square kilometer. With the width of 200 to 300km and length of 1220 km, the Great Khingan started from the Heilongjiang province in north and narrowed down to south. The average elevation of the area is roughly 1200 to 1300 meters with the highest peak of 2035 meters. The Great Khingan covers 84,600 square kilometers and forest stock has a total volume of 501 million cubic meters, which is 7.8% of China’s total forest amount.  

Map of the Great Khingan Area 

    As mentioned earlier, the Great Khingan brought a generous amount of trees for humans to use. More railroads were built across the forests for convenient transportation. In addition, the ecosystem also benefits the economy. During Guangxu 32 years, huge amount of gold was found, which brought a great fortune to the country. Moreover, even nowadays people who inhabited in the north of the forest still make their living of felling and hunting. In addition, the biodiversity of the forest makes a great contribution to human’s ecology study.

The Great Khingan Mountains location in China

    As one of the most diverse forests in China, the Great Khingan Forest was originally formed during the Jurassic orogeny period. Date back to the early Qing dynasty, the Hans were forbiddened to enter the forest, so the forest easily maintained its great diversity. The Siberian and Manchurian floras largely influenced the dense forest. Precious pine, Mongalian oak tree, birch and other rare species are largely grown in the forests. Also animals like deer, sable, brown bear and more than 1000 species of wildlives can be easily found in the forest.

    However, the ecosystem of the Great Khingan was eventually affected by humans. During the colonization of Japan (1931-1945), huge amount of trees were felled to build railroads. Although the railroads made a great connection of the Great Khingan and the Lesser Khingan and increased the transportation efficiency, the biodiversity suffered serious damages. Moreover, the forest fire had always been a challenge for the Great Khingan forest. In 1987, the May Six Fire was accidently lighted by a forest worker, which lead the biggest wildfire in China’s history. The fire lasted nearly a month and covered 10,000 square kilometers. Thousands of trees were destroyed in the fire. The original ecosystem was badly damaged and would take decades to recover.

    In addition, the most serious and ugly human impact on this ecosystem is deforestation. In pre-historical times, The Great Khingan area had 34 millions hectares coved forest. In contrast, in year 1988, The Great Khingan area had 15 millions hectares coved forest. More than half of the forest has disappeared due to human activities like cropping. Moreover, the conservation status is bad, as the Chinese government did not realize this problem until the end of 20^th century. Hence, the human impact on this ecosystem is really ugly.

Map of deforestation grow in Great Khingan Area for the past 60 years

 The beautiful forest in Great Khingan Mountains before

 The beautiful forest in Great Khingan Mountains before

heavy Logging activities in Great Khingan Area in winter now

    The Khan Ma Nature Reserve is the most protected area of the ecosystem.The Khan Ma Nature Reserve is a remaining area that is not one of the destruction of the wildlife habitat. It also contains large variety of ancient trees.The ecosystem will actually get better since both people and government are caring more about the protection of the diversity in the Great Khingan forest. As the China’s economic growth rapidly, the awareness of the conservation of the ancient forests rises. So the government put more money in protecting the Great Khingan forest in order to maintain its biodiversity. Also because of globalization, the treasures of the Great Khingan are cared by more people in the world, and people put more effort in protecting it than ever before.

    As the major ecological crisis at the Great Khingan areas is the rapid deforestation rate, there are following methods I believe can be effective in improving the human impact on this ecosystem. First, government should play an important role in encouraging and financially supporting to plant more trees in order to achieve a sustainable ecological system. Government should also raise the awareness among the public to raise funding to plant tree for the purpose of conservation of the forest in Great Khingan area. In addition, government should implement some governmental policies to encourage domestic major wood consumers to obtain their resources by importing from other countries. Another way government can use to regulate and reduce the deforestation rate is to increase the cost of cropping trees license and impose sales taxes on locally cropped wood which can increase the price of the local cropped trees. At the same time, the government and many non-profit organizations can work hard on persuading consumers to use alternative resources which are more environmental friendly for their massive production, which will result in decrease in demand of local cropped tree. Hence, with the price increased and demand decreased, the supply of local cropped tree will eventually decrease to a equilibrium points where the deforestation rate will reach zero. Therefore, in order to achieve this goal , we, as different parties involved in this issue, would have different responsibilities in insuring a better ecosystem for the future generation.

Table 2: Estimate of the Total Area of Forests in Pre-Historic China

Province	Land Currently Suitable for Forestry (1,000 ha)	Built-up Land (1,000 ha)	Cropland (1,000 ha)	Forested Areas in Pre-Historic Times (1,000 ha)	Forest Cover (1,000 ha, % of total area)
Beijing	630	90	409	1,129	67
Tianjin	50	75	430	555	50
Hebei	6,210	1,801	6,544	14,555	77
Shanxi	5,770	1,832	3,681	11,283	75
Inner Mongolia	44,094	4,705	5,082	53,881	49
Liaoning	6,710	1,647	3,452	11,809	79
Jilin	8,769	2,076	3,932	14,777	82
Heilongjiang	21,537	4,438	8,905	34,880	76
Shanghai	10	110	318	438	75
Jiangsu	504	567	4,522	5,592	56
Zhejiang	5,898	521	1,691	8,109	81
Anhui	3,550	478	4,334	8,462	64
Fujian	8,875	1,278	1,229	11,381	95
Jiangxi	10,578	1,765	2,337	14,680	92
Shandong	1,937	706	6,798	9,441	63
Henan	3,839	727	6,887	11,453	72
Hubei	7,403	1,830	3,422	12,654	70
Hunan	11,730	2,056	3,296	17,082	81
Guangdong	12,244	3,478	2,879	18,601	85
Guangxi	13,963	2,694	2,611	19,268	84
Sichuan	19,031	6,764	6,256	32,050	57
Guizhou	9,010	2,067	1,849	12,926	76
Yunan	26,124	4,085	2,858	33,062	87
Tibet	11,721	832	224	12,777	11
Shaanxi	12,487	2,234	3,488	18,208	96
Gansu	6,132	3,226	3,482	12,839	33
Qinghai	3,037	1,323	580	4,940	7
Ningxia	621	599	801	2,021	31
Xinjiang	2,694	4,084	3,134	9,911	6
Taiwan	1,970	166	1,284	3,420	95
Total	-	-	-	413,983	43

Table 3: Forest Cover in 1948 China (1,000 ha)

Region	Actually Forested Area	Land Suitable for Forest Cover
Northeast	30,690	38,062
Northwest	6,156	94,928
Shaanxi	1,990	4,682
Gansu	2,285	8,760
Ningxia	59	7,864
Qinghai	1,456	34,225
Xinjiang	366	39,397
Southwest	26,676	80,227
Sichuan	8,289	6,055
Xikang	6,139	22,690
Guizhou	1,588	7,236
Yunan	9,167	10,762
Tibet	1,493	33,485
East	5,866	16,279
Jiangsu	275	1,838
Zhejiang	808	2,122
Anhui	713	3,567
Shandong	108	4,504
Fujian	2,179	3,753
Taiwan	1,783	496
Central South	11,921	35,611
Henan	103	5,061
Hubei	2,367	4,917
Hunan	4,094	6,679
Jiangxi	2,019	4,542
Guangdong	2,238	6,715
Guangxi	1,099	7,696
North	1,496	24,487
Hebei	126	4,089
Chahar	155	7,350
Suiyuan	243	7,545
Shanxi	971	5,503
Total	82,805	289,594
Source: Lee Ting et. al. (ed.) Forestry of Contemporary China (The Social Sciences Publishers of China: Beijing, 1985) pp. 608-9. This Table draws on The Classification of Lands in China, published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Guomindang government (January, 1948)

Table 4: An Alternative Estimate of Forest Cover in 1948 China

Province	Forested Area (1,000 ha)	Growing Stock (million m3)
Hebei	635	10
Shanxi	367	10
Inner Mongolia	13,740	848
Liaoning	1,884	67
Jilin	4,270	610
Heilongjiang	16,707	1848
Jiangsu	275	4
Zhejiang	808	13
Anhui	713	22
Fujian	2,179	120
Jiangxi	2,019	72
Shandong	108	1
Henan	103	4
Hubei	2,367	52
Hunan	4,094	171
Guangdong	3,720	106
Guangxi	1,099	34
Sichuan	8,700	1,600
Guizhou	1,588	87
Yunan	9,167	908
Tibet	6,320	1,436
Shaanxi	1,990	87
Gansu	2,285	231
Qinghai	191	21
Ningxia	59	3
Xinjiang	366	54
Taiwan	1,783	205
Total	87,538	8,624
Total Coverage	9.1%	-

Table 5: Forest Cover in China - 1976, 1981, and 1988 (1,000 ha).

Province	1976	1981	1988
Beijing	200	144	215
Tianjin	30	30	62
Hebei	2,010	1,677	2,011
Shanxi	1,090	810	993
Inner Mongolia	10,700	13,740	13,836
Liaoning	3,420	3,653	3,939
Jilin	6,510	6,079	6,231
Heilongjiang	16,660	15,294	15,615
Shanghai	10	8	9
Jiangsu	340	325	386
Zhejiang	3,960	3,429	4,037
Anhui	1,750	1,792	2,261
Fujian	5,900	4,496	5,003
Jiangxi	6,100	5,462	5,992
Shandong	1,320	905	1,596
Henan	1,790	1,420	1,571
Hubei	4,360	3,779	3,854
Hunan	6,580	6,872	6,754
Guangdong	7,480	5,879	4,864
Hainan	-	-	866
Guangxi	5,510	5,227	5,227
Sichuan	7,460	6,811	10,872
Guizhou	2,561	2,309	2,221
Yunan	9,560	9,197	9,327
Tibet	6,320	6,320	6,320
Shaanxi	4,580	4,471	4,708
Gansu	1,870	1,769	2,029
Qinghai	190	195	266
Ningxia	60	95	118
Xinjiang	1,440	1,121	1,497
Taiwan	2,069	1,970	1,970
Total	121,860	115,277	124,653

Table 6: Growing Stock in China's Forests - 1976, 1981 and 1988

(million m3)

Provinces	Total 1976 Growing Stock	Total 1981 Growing Stock	Total 1988 Growing Stock	Forests 1976	Forests 1981	Forests 1988
Beijing	4	4	5	3	1	4
Tianjin	2	2	2	-	-	1
Hebei	73	48	62	62	26	43
Shanxi	57	53	45	39	33	38
Inner Mongolia	946	946	1,025	848	848	865
Liaoning	87	109	132	83	100	121
Jilin	730	711	760	695	608	710
Heilongjiang	1,580	1,552	1,481	1,468	1,434	1,317
Shanghai	-	1	1	-	-	-
Jiangsu	13	15	28	5	3	7
Zhejiang	82	99	101	63	79	88
Anhui	47	70	85	40	55	71
Fujian	243	431	379	224	296	264
Jiangxi	263	303	242	218	236	169
Shandong	23	24	47	12	5	11
Henan	79	68	92	50	32	40
Hubei	96	118	124	92	99	107
Hunan	189	199	183	150	160	141
Guangdong	212	232	152	199	203	128
Hainan	-	-	63	-	-	58
Guangxi	193	266	242	171	221	204
Sichuan	1,347	1,153	1,410	1,298	1,049	1,273
Guizhou	159	159	140	141	126	108
Yunan	989	1,321	1,349	946	1,097	1,097
Tibet	1,436	1,436	1,436	1,403	1,401	1,401
Shaanxi	244	279	295	243	252	259
Gansu	198	173	192	189	164	172
Qinghai	31	23	35	24	17	30
Ningxia	5	4	7	3	3	5
Xinjiang	237	235	232	213	200	183
Taiwan	186	227	227	186	227	227

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