an overview of forests and forestry in the country region.docxVIP

An overview of forests and forestry in China: focus on NortheastChina forest region An overview of forests and forestry in ChinaForest areaIn China, forest covered 195.5 million hectares, including 119.7 million hectares of natural forest, in 2008, making it the 5th largest forest area in the world. ?However, looking at the percentage of forest cover, this represents only 20.4% of the country’s land area, placing China at the 139th position in the world. Forests are unevenly distributed across the country, mostly in North-Eastern and South-Eastern China (see Figure 1), leaving large areas especially North-Western China with almost no forests.Forest categoriesOne common ways to categorize forests is by thedifferent uses (Figure 2). The forests can be dividedinto four groups: protective forests; special purposeforests; commercial timber forests and fuelwood forests.Protective forests are planted mainly to guard againstflooding. Special-purpose forests serve for scientificresearch and environmental protection. The timberforests are sources of industrial roundwood and nonwoodforest products and the fuelwood forests providewood for fuel.Among the arboreal forests, i.e. excluding shrub andbamboo forests, commercial forests occupy the largestarea in percentage terms - the 78.6 million hectaresaccounting for more than half of the total forest area inChina. The area of protective forests is the next largest,accounting for more than one-third of the forest area.In terms of broad age groupings, the forests can bedivided into young growth forests; semi-mature forests;near-mature forests and mature forests, among whichyoung growth forests and semi-mature forests accountfor 67.9% of the total forest area. In terms of speciesgroups, oak, Chinese red pine, fir, birch and larch are thefive dominant species in China’s forest area.Ownership42.5% of the China’s forests are state-owned while 57.5% are collective-owned. Thereare no privately owned forests. However, private interests can