ABSTRACT

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... 247 References ..................................................................................................................................... 247

China is a vast country with a diverse physical environment. With a few exceptions, China contains all of the main forest vegetation types of the northern hemisphere. Widespread ecological degradation has constrained sustainable socioeconomic development in recent decades, particularly in the period before the end of twentieth century (Li 2004). For instance, in the early 1980s and 2000s, 23% of the land area (on which approximately 35% of the Chinese population depended for ecosystem services) suffered ecological degradation (Lü et al. 2012), including a reduced capacity for carbon sequestration. The estimated economic costs of interrelated problems associated with this degradation, including resource depletion, environmental pollution, and ecological damage, have amounted to over 13% of the national gross domestic product (Shi et al. 2011).