LAND USE OF THE LI-SPEAKING PEOPLE IN A MOUNTAINOUS AREA OF HAINAN ISLAND, CHINA: IMPACT OF NATIONAL NATURE RESERVE ESTABLISHED IN 1986

摘要

An IKONOS image for 2001 was used to produce a georeferenced map of land cover and land use for a Li-speaking village territory in mountainous areas of Hainan Island, China. The entire island of Hainan was established as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in 1988, when it became Hainan Province. Since then, it is one of most rapidly developing Provinces where large money has been invested to tourism development and cash cropping. The subject village is located on the foot of Mount Wushisan (the highest peak in the Island) where a national nature reserve was established and tourism development started in 1986. Indigenous subsistence of this village consisted of rice cultivation in the paddy fields, cultivation of rice and other crops in slush and burn fields, hunting animals, and gathering plants. Since the establishment of national reserve, however, subsistence activities that included burning, hunting, and gathering were placed under the ban. Instead, the government encouraged the people to plant cash crops (e.g. banana, tea, and medicinal plants) for increasing the income level of the villagers. Also, the grasslands around the villages that were maintained as sources of buffalo fodder and roofing materials have changed to secondary growth because regular burning was stopped. In the present paper, we investigated whether IKONOS could supply (1) a land use map of the village territory that will be useful for anthropological research and (2) a map that shows the distribution of slush and burn gardens or grassland before the establishment of the national reserve. For the latter purpose, the people's knowledge --secondary growth dominated with Haname lidacea trees were the grassland in the past-- were used. Also, we could find several indicator trees in the secondary growth that evidence the existence of slush and burn gardens in the past. Locations of such trees were recorded in the field so as to be used as training data for the classification. The results showed that the land use map made with IKONOS was sufficiently detailed and the past distribution of grassland could be identified, while identification of past slush and burn garden sites was not successful. High resolution satellite could provide useful information for anthropologists, though simplified analytical framework of satellite images should be presented for the utilization by non-professionals.