The mountain region of Southwest China is not only one of the two key regions that China’s natural forests distributed,but also has lots of degraded natural forests.Its natural forests are essential to keep regional ecosystems safe and biodiversity conservation.The forests geographical zoning plays an important role in regional forests management.Based on plants geographical division and some special topic zonings published,according to zonal climax forest types,land features and drivers of degradation,this paper used the DIVA-GIS and ArcMap,divided the degraded natural forests in mountain areas of Southwest China into five zones,namely tropical rain and monsoon forests of low-mountain in South Yunnan,evergreen broad-leaf and Pinus massoniana forests over limestone in Guizhou-Yunnan,evergreen broad-leaf and Pinus yunnanensis forests of plateau in Central Yunnan,evergreen broad-leaf and Cryptomeria-Metasequoia-Cunninghamia forests of low-mountain around Sichuan Basin,dark coniferous forests over valley and mountains in Sichuan-Yunnan.Introduced the degradation state and main reasons of natural forests of each zone.Zoning of the degraded natural forests at regional level will contribute to the ecological restoration of the degraded natural forests in mountains of Southwest China.
