Far East
The distribution of the forests in the Far East is shown on Map 1 .Ten different forest types are depicted. In the continental areas of the region the most abundant types are non-tropical mixed broadleaf/needleleaf forest, evergreen needleleaf forest and sparse trees and parkland, with deciduous forests becoming more common in the south east. In Japan the forests are mainly plantations of exotic species with some deciduous broadleaf forest and evergreen needleleaf forest in the north.
The forest type pattern on the continent has some artificial-looking blocks of forest in it. This is due to the classification of the datasets. These datasets came in with no forest types delineated, and WCMC has used an overlay of Holdridge's ecological zones coverage to distinguish one type from another. This is a very low resolution dataset, as can be seen in Map 2. The Japanese data came from a source that already had types in it, so this problem did not arise.
Vast areas of China and Mongolia are not suitable for forest growth: the Plateau of Tibet and the Gobi Desert are in ecological zones that are too dry or cold (Map 2). Much of the Manchurian Plain is also in a steppe zone, but there are forests to the east of this which are in forest zones.
Of all the countries in the region China supports most forest (Fig. 2). Due to the inclusion of the sparse trees and parkland category Mongolia has the second largest forest area (Map 1). It also had the highest percent protected at 13%: all 6 other countries had less than 10% protected. Note that Taiwan and Hong Kong are treated separately from China here. Hong Kong had the least of its forests protected (0%), with Peoples Republic of Korea a close second with 1% (Fig. 2).
Four of the 10 forest type categories were tropical (Fig.1, Table 2), and three of them had no protection. One of these was exotic species plantations, which should not be included in IUCN categories I-VI, so 0% was a good result for this class, but the other two, mangrove and semi-evergreen moist broadleaf forest, should have a degree of protection. The most abundant category of all was the non-tropical sparse trees and parkland, but deciduous broadleaf forest, evergreen needleleaf forest and mixed broadleaf/needleleaf forest were comparable in their cover amount. Exotic species plantations and sclerophyllous dry forests were much less abundant. All non-tropical forest types had a percentage protection less than 7%. Tropical deciduous/semi-deciduous forest was the only category with a figure of over 10% (Fig. 1).
Fig. 3 shows the distribution of the forest cover into ecological zones. There were 27 ecological zones in this region: similar in number to the Middle East region. Most of the area of this region was outside of the tropics. There was most forest in the boreal moist forest zone, which was mainly east of Mongolia in China (Map 2). The forest type in this zone was mainly evergreen needleleaf (Table 3). The two next largest figures were for cool temperate forest zones, and the most abundant types of natural forest in these were mixed needleleaf/broadleaf forest,deciduous broadleaf forest and evergreen needleleaf forest (Table 3). The cover of mixed needleleaf/broadleaf forest was restricted mainly to the three cool temperate forest zones, and was protected to a certain extent in all three (Table 3). The non-tropical sclerophyllous dry forest was mainly confined to three of the drier zones, and was only very minimally protected in two of these. It was not protected at all in the warm temperate thorn steppe zone around Taiyuan and Sinkiang in China.
In an attempt to impartially indicate natural, undisturbed forest variants which may be under the most immediate threat of destruction, a list was drawn up that pinpointed those under 100 km2 in extent with none protected. These are variants of relatively limited extent and which do not even have any legal protection; possibly much less actual protection. Some of these forest variants may indeed be truly rare and unprotected types, others are clearly fragments of forest at the end of their ranges, as for example certain types of dry forest should not normally occur in moist ecological zones, or vice versa. An in-depth analysis of these forest variants is outside the scope of this study. There were 27 of the 68 variants in the Far East that met these criteria, and these are listed below (T=tropical forest type, N=non-tropical forest type):
The warm temperate rain forest and the boreal rain forest zones had the highest percentage forest cover of all 30 zones in the region (Table 4). Five zones contained no forest cover at all, but these were bush, steppe, ice and desert zones, which were probably never forested. Fifteen of the 30 zones were "forest zones" and twelve of these were more than 10% covered by forest (up to 86% in the case of warm temperate rain forest, but this zone was confined to Japan and in addition to being comparatively very small, only supported exotic species plantations (Map 1, Table 4). This seems to indicate that the entire global representation of the natural forest types which occurred in this zone has been wiped out. The two forest zones with little (< 10%) forest cover were subtropical wet forest and warm temperate dry forest. These were in China and it was probably because of deforestation that they were not forested.
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