Assessment of Eco-tourism Impact on Landscape Ecology in Zhangjiajie Nature Reserves in Hunan Province

Investigations were carried out on different sample plots of 7 landscape types in July 2015 in Zhangjiajie Nature Reserve in Hunan province. The impact of tourism on vegetation and landscape types was evaluated by micro and meso-scale analysis. The results showed that number of shade plant species and tree seedlings, litter thickness and species diversity index could be good indicators for impact assessment. Investigation demonstrated that the impact index of phytoecology was high, indicating that tourism caused ecological degradation. The current landscape ecological indicators were higher than initial ones, among them the greatest change was the comprehensive landscape visual sensitivity index. The landscape ecological effect index (0.423) in the research area was close to serious, suggesting that tourism had negative impact in medium scale landscape. Plant ecological effect index of different landscape types decreased with the increase of distance, indicating that it changed from inner to outside. The nearest neighbor analysis showed that at the initial stage of nature reserve, nearest neighbor index was 0.97 with random distribution pattern, while it was 1.03 in 2015, aggregated distribution pattern.