Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Forestry Development in China

Abstract

Since 1949, China's forestry development has made remarkable achievements. To summarize "China's Experience", the paper built a logical analysis framework aided by the literature review; adopted the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis methods  to systematically study the evolution of the spatial and temporal pattern of China's forestry development in the past 70 years (1949-2020) and the next 30 years (2021-2050). The results show that the evolution of forestry development can be divided into three stages consisting of nine sub-stages from 1949 to 2050. The first stage is focusing on timber production during 1949-1998, the second stage is focusing on ecological conservation during 1998-2018, and the third stage is focusing on high-quality development during 2018-2050. The faced situations, main signs, evolution process, basic characteristics, and target effects vary by stage. The four drivers of the spatio-temporal evolution of forestry development in China are the administrative system, laws and policies, investment, and science and technology development. The "China's Experience" is of great significance for the forestry development of other developing countries in the world.

Received: 1 July 2023 | Revised: 18 September 2023 | Accepted: 23 November 2023 

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Author Contribution Statement

Shidong Li: Conceptualization, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Project administration. Youliang Ning: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data Curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.