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| Review of the studies on the prediction of natural vegetation distribution |
| Wen Zhongming1,2,Jiao Feng1,2 |
| 1.Institute of Soil and Water Conservation,NWSUAF;2 Institute of Soil and Water Conservation,CAS and MWR: 712100,Yangling,Shaanxi,China |
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Abstract Prediction of natural vegetation distribution can provide valuable references information for the biology conservation,climatic change,habitat management,and ecological rehabilitation.After careful analysis of the previous studies,this paper outlined the main trend of the studies on vegetation-environment relationships: the vegetation distribution is controlled not only by climate but also other factors such as topography and soil,and multiple factors analysis will be used more and more in the vegetation-environment relationship studies;in terms of precision of predictive models,the nonparametric models such as neural networks and general additive model(GAM) can give a better prediction than other models;the application of remote sensing and geographical information system can provide abundance of data and suitable techniques to analyze synthetically the vegetation-environment relationships on large scales,and promote the development of some more advanced models;No doubt that more progress has been made in China,yet there are still more space for the further development in the data updating,modeling method,and choice of scale and variables.
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Received: 30 November 2008
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