The Method of Zoning Geoheritage Protected Area Based on GIS and Its Implication-Case Study of Hexigten Global Geopark, Inner Mongolia

摘要

Adopting GIS in geoheritage protected area zoning is rather limited in China,though it has been employed as an effective tool for nature reserve's zoning worldwide. It is not regularly used by geoconservation not caused by GIS itself but geoheritage's distribution uncontinuity and ambiguous cri-terions for protected area levels made workers always confused. In this article,we firstly defined standards and levels of four type's protected areas for zoning by citing two documents of Ministry of Land and Resources of China: Geoheritage Conservation Administrative Provisions and Technical Requirements of National Geopark Plan Revision. All threats factors of Hexigten Global Geopark were distinguished. Furthermore, we normalized georeferenced data and briefly introduced the method and procedure of geoheritage protected area zoning by ArcGIS software. We computed a suitable map of geoheritage protection, where three types areas: suitable, unsuitable and conflict area can be solving by tools of spatial analysis and map algebra. We further defined the levels of suitable protected area based on the results, which rectified by field work. Finally,we discussed the zoning results of Hexigten Global Geopark and suggested measures for different levels geoheritage protected areas. A conclusion was drawn in this article, which GIS is an effective protected areas zoning method and it is significant to geoconservation, but clear criterions and index weight of geoheritage protected area zoning are required.