ABSTRACT

The Changbai Mountain Nature Reserve (CMNR), as introduced in Chapter 11 of this book (Wang et al., 2011), is located on the border between China and North Korea. The CMNR is famous for having a unique set of vertically distributed ecosystems that surround the volcanic summit at 2749 m above sea level. Geologically, the region is situated at the edge of the East Asia continent along the Paci‰c competent zone. The Tianchi volcanic zone has been active since Cenozoic time (Liu, 1987; Liu et al., 1992a,b) and had one of the largest eruptions in the last 2000 years (Machida et al., 1990; Liu et al., 1998). A study concluded that the volcanic eruption is intracontinental

CONTENTS

12.1 Introduction ................................................................................................233 12.2 Methods .......................................................................................................234