Evaluation for ecological functions of the fragmented urban forests by landscape ecological methods and molecular ecological methods

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Factors affecting fragmentation of urban forests, size structure and genetic structure of woody species communities, species composition of small mammal communities, and the changes of inter-specific relationships by fragmentation of their habitats were analyzed in the northern part of Kitakyushu City.Main results of the studies were as follow : 1)the regulation systems contributed to conserve the area of urban forests, 2)there were certain site conditions that were prone to be destructed, 3)some forests could become the key stones for conserving regional biological diversity even the forests had been fragmented, and 4)certain species might be severely affected on their population structure, population dynamics and genetic structures by the effects of habitat fragmentation.Some ecological functions involved in those fragmented forests could be evaluated by integrating above results. For example, Castanopsis cuspidate, which was one of dominant canopy species in the region, formed abundant seedling bank in the highly fragmented forests with canopy dominated by the Castanopsis. This is attributable to the fact that the number of small rodents that could become main seed predator of the Castanopsis was very few in the forests. Thus, the habitat function of this type of forests was lower for some rodent species, but higher for Castanopsis cuspidata.