Abstract:

Forest landscape pattern influences the forest function, which can have an impact on the ecological environment by regulating moisture, nutrient flow and material flow. Direct and indirect effects of forest landscape pattern in West Dongting Lake Region on the environment were analyzed by using Analytic Hierarchy Process, multilevel gray relational model andpath analysis with the landscape pattern and the environmental quality indexes. The results showed that: 1) The path analysis provided an effective way to analyze direct and indirect response of the environment to forest landscape pattern; 2) The environment was directly influenced by forest landscape pattern, which demonstrated that the structure affected its function. The analysis showed that quality of the environment had the closest correlations to evenness, followed by variation coefficient, isolation, fractal dimension and dominance of the forest pattern; 3) The forest landscape patterns, such as the change coefficient, fractal dimension, isolation, dominance and evenness, have also an indirect influence upon the environment, and every factor has an impact on the environment by means of the others; 4) Besides the forest landscape pattern, the environment was influenced by other factors such as the climate and the soil. However the influence mechanism is not clear because of the absence of further analysis of the ecological processes. 

Key words: forest landscape pattern, environmental response, quality of the environment, path analysis, West Dongting Lake Region