Abstract:

To study the effect of human disturbances on subtropical evergreen broadleaved forests, the author quantitatively examined the community structure of the Castanopsis eyrei forest in relation to road accessibility in Thousand-Island Lake, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. The results showed that the average canopy cover of the tree, shrub and grass layer had significantly positive exponential correlation with the distance to the road, suggesting that increasing human disturbances could cause declines in accumulated biomass and growth condition of the community. However, these three layers showed different sensitivity in response to disturbances, i.e. trees