International Mountain Day | Can towering mountains really be destroyed by human behavior?

How is Mount Tai? The mountains of Qi and Lu are endless. As one of the most magnificent landforms in nature, mountains have been carrying rich historical and cultural connotations since ancient times. They are endowed with many myths and legends and spiritual symbols, attracting and inspiring countless poets, painters, photographers, and many climbers and outdoor enthusiasts to challenge and explore. But do you know? The beautiful mountains that are as solid as a rock and as strong as iron also need our careful care!

01 Mountain protection is urgent

When it comes to mountain protection, we all think of a well-known sentence in the "Remonstrance against Expelling Foreigners" by Li Si, a politician of the Qin Dynasty: "Taishan does not give up soil, so it can become so big", and wonder if the towering mountains as solid as rocks can really be destroyed by human behavior? The answer is of course yes! Mountain protection in my country is urgent! Especially in recent years, with the vigorous development of the tourism market, destructive tourism chaos has occurred frequently in my country.

The scenery of Mount Tai, the first of the Five Great Mountains (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

As a special geomorphic unit and environmental element, most mountains are scarce and non-renewable. Some are even important geological relics, natural scenic spots or geological parks, with important scientific, aesthetic and economic values. In addition, high-altitude mountains are often a paradise for many rare and endangered animals and plants, and a large number of unique wild animals and plants live there.

Wild giant pandas in Qianfoshan National Nature Reserve in Sichuan (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency video screenshot)

At the same time, many mountains often contain rich cultural relics, forming an ingenious combination of nature and humanity, constituting the main type of scenic spots in China - mountain landscapes, and becoming the main object of visits.

Tourists visit Tianzhu Mountain Scenic Area in Anhui Province (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

However, it must be noted that due to the unique formation conditions, mountainous areas are often at high altitudes, with large temperature differences between day and night and weak vegetation coverage, resulting in strong water erosion, wind erosion and even freeze-thaw effects. The ecosystem is fragile and once it suffers external damage, it often takes a long time to recover, or even causes irreparable permanent damage.

A section of the Zhao Great Wall ruins located on a mountain ridge at the junction of Huixian City, Weihui City and Linzhou City has been cut in half due to illegal mining (Image source: CCTV News screenshot)

In addition to the damage caused intentionally by humans, mountain logging, mining, industry, tourism, climate warming, etc. also threaten the biodiversity and ecological security of mountainous areas, which are essential for soil and water conservation, clean water sources, food, medicinal plants, etc. in mountainous areas. For example, the continued warming of the climate has led to the accelerated melting of alpine glaciers, affecting the freshwater supply of residents downstream of the river, and posing severe challenges to their survival and development; cutting down mountain forests for the development of agriculture and tourism will lead to soil erosion in the mountains and the loss and isolation of biological habitats, resulting in the decline of freshwater quality and soil productivity downstream, affecting food security in downstream areas. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out systematic mountain protection and it has become the unshirkable responsibility of every citizen of the earth.

02 Difficulties in mountain protection

Mountain protection is an important measure for land space protection and ecological green development, and plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity, conserving freshwater resources, and controlling soil loss in mountainous areas. However, due to administrative divisions, mountainous areas are easily divided by administrative units and river basins, which brings many difficulties to mountain protection:

♦Mountains often span different watershed units, and the management methods or regulations adopted for the protection of different watersheds are different, resulting in the restriction or blocking of habitat patches of biological communities, the reduction of space for biological habitat selection, and the inhibition or destruction of the integrity of ecological processes.

♦The excessive construction of high-cut slope tourist roads in mountainous areas and the overdevelopment of mountaintop wind power have led to numerous mountain geological disasters and intensified soil erosion. The forest vegetation in some watershed areas has been permanently damaged and difficult to recover, reducing the ecological diversity of the mountainous areas.

♦The publicity of mountain protection is not in place. Especially in recent years, with the gradual improvement of living standards, hiking and exploration has become an important mountain tourism method for outdoor sports enthusiasts. This has also brought new challenges to the protection of mountain resources, such as the frequent forest fires caused by the use of open flames, the random discarding of domestic waste, especially disposable plastic products that form a large amount of difficult-to-degrade white waste, etc. The publicity and measures for protecting mountains and civilized tourism need to be improved urgently.

♦The overall protection policy for mountains is imperfect. Although there are relevant protection measures such as national parks and national nature reserves, due to the division of administrative areas, cross-regional border areas and remote mountainous areas have become "lawless places" for environmental law-breaking companies to evade supervision.

In response to the discussion of the above issues, my country's mountain protection work requires coordinated interaction and control by multiple parties to form a good situation of coordination between top and bottom, interaction between left and right, participation by all people, and joint efforts.

Success Stories

In recent years, with the increasing attention paid to the ecological environment of mountains, many successful cases of mountain protection have been explored in various places, among which the most typical one is the protection of Huangshan. Huangshan, located in Huangshan City, Anhui Province, is one of the ten famous mountains in China, a world cultural and natural heritage, and a world geological park. It is known as "after visiting the Five Sacred Mountains, you will not visit other mountains; after visiting Huangshan, you will not visit other mountains." Huangshan is 40 kilometers long from north to south and 30 kilometers wide from east to west, with a total area of ​​1,200 square kilometers. It spans six administrative units, has 88 peaks over 1,000 meters high, belonging to nine management areas, more than 300 cliff carvings, more than 300 species of vertebrates, and more than 170 species of birds. In particular, the world-renowned Huangshan Welcoming Pine has become a symbol of mountain tourism in my country. However, the influx of tourists has also damaged the fragile plant ecology in the high-altitude areas of Huangshan, causing the Huangshan Scenic Area to experience "ecological fatigue" phenomena such as soil compaction, reduced vegetation, soil erosion, and rock desertification.

Since the 1990s, inspired by the "marine fishing moratorium" and "closing mountains for afforestation", Huangshan has explored the implementation of a three- to five-year closed rotation for overloaded scenic spots, and restored the ecological environment through artificial assisted natural recovery. At the same time, automatic monitoring stations are built in key areas to achieve real-time monitoring and analysis of environmental quality, ecological effects, and multi-indicator correlation, and timely warning of overloaded tourist behaviors in scenic spots.

After nearly 30 years of closure and rotation of more than 10 scenic spots, the air quality, surface water environment quality, and regional environmental noise quality of Huangshan Scenic Area have always reached or exceeded the national first-level or first-class standards. The forest coverage rate has increased from 56% in the 1970s to 98.29%, and the forest greening rate has reached 98.53%. The exposed areas previously trampled by tourists have been densely covered by plants, and the thickness of humus under the forest has increased by an average of more than 2.5 cm. The types, quantity and activity of soil microorganisms have been significantly improved or increased, achieving a win-win situation for mountain landscape, tourism economy, and ecological protection. It is at the forefront of mountain protection in my country and has provided inspiration and experience for the protection of many famous mountains and rivers in my country.

Author: Liu Hanbin, PhD in Geology, Senior Engineer

Reviewer: Lv Yan, Professor of the School of Geological Engineering and Surveying and Mapping, Chang'an University, Master's Supervisor