A comprehensive spatial information system is essential and provides the scientific foundation for participatory natural resource management in the watersheds. Up-to-date maps visualize past and current land use, and provide easily understandable and traceable information of previous mistakes and are imperative for improved future land use planning and watershed management plans.

Given the complexity of the mountain ecosystem, main research focus has to be limited to the upper watersheds. Priority will be given to select research sites in sub-watersheds, where on-going projects with partner institutions are already involved in research and development.

Sites under consideration are in Lanping, Fugong, and Qianhushan counties.

As explained in detail in the following chapter, comprehensive watershed management can not concentrate solely on upstream problems, it is important to keep a broad focus and downstream communities and their needs have to be considered as well. Therefore the watershed management and the spatial information system will focus on the watershed as a whole and agro-ecosystems in Xishuangbanna will receive the required attention to develop a comprehensive watershed management plan in the future.

The key ecosystems we try to assess are the following:

a. Temperate alpine-rangeland-wetland mosaic in NW Yunnan, which includes alpine meadow, alpine scree, and cold shrub and rangeland grazing, summer camp rangeland for grazing for local Tibetan communities, the logging can be found in the conifer forest in the most lower elevation; the alpine wetland is another key habitats for many high aquatic plant and wildlife species;

b. Sub-tropical ever-green board leaf forest-upland farm mosaic in middle stream of Lancang-Mekong, which includes ever-green board forest mixture with conifer forest, and intensive upland agriculture as well as cash crop plantation;

c. Tropical rainforest-swidden-rubber mosaic in Xishuangbanna, which includes different patches of tropical forest, secondary vegetation, active swidden, and rubber plantation;

d. Tropical deciduous forest-cash crop plantation in Northern Thailand and Laos, which include the Dipterocapus forest, tropical fruit plantation, etc.

The key watersheds will be defined to assess the dynamics, diversity and complexity of landscape mosaics at micro, meso, and macro levels in Lancang-Mekong.

Project output:

Expected results and outputs

Mapping products of different scales addressing and supporting:

" Assessment of land use and land cover mosaics including agro-ecosystem biodiversity (forestry, agriculture, biodiversity) at macro watershed

" Meso and micro scale land use and land cover changes in three watersheds respectively for catching the major proximate drivers, shifting cultivation, plantation, grazing, logging, etc.

" Micro watershed planning for assessment of land suitability for a wide range of species (agriculture, forestry, agroforestry)