Major Research Perspectives on Environmental and Developmental Issues for the Longitudinal Range-Gorge Region (LRGR) in Southwestern China
我国西南纵向岭谷区环境与 发展问题初步研究

Located in north -south directed mountains and valleys in Southwestern China,mainly in Yunnan Province , the Longitudinal Range-Gorge Region (LRGR) is a very important ecological corridor between South China and South -East Asian. Ecological changes in this region directly influence Chinese trans -boundary ecological security and resources security. Under the comprehensive conditions of environmental pattern on landform, climate, water, soil, vegetation as well as human activity, corridor phenomena in the south -north direction and barrier functions in the west -east direction have been showed distinctively on ecological economic system in this region. "Corridor-barrier" functions in LRGR are formed mainly by atmospheric circulation and geographical location; the barrier effect of North-South directive mountains to monsoon; and human activities. "Corridor-barrier" functions and its ecological effect in LRGR can be expressed as three major aspects: obviously three dimension distribution laws of vegetation in north-south direction, west-east direction and vertical direction; developed dry valleys and their fragile environments, and diverse ecosystems and their complicated patterns. Vital scientific research questions in this region include: ecological system changes and their driving factors, ecological effects of significant engineering construction projects, and trans -boundary ecological security as well as countermeasures. For better understanding of trans -boundary ecological security and socio -economic condition, ecological -economic regionalization is required to provide a scientific base. Based on macro ecological region system, social-economic indexes are applied to differentiate ecological-economic regions in this paper. The scheme divides the region into three temperature zones, seven natural zones, nineteen natural divisions and fifty-five economic districts.