Karst rocky desertification is a fragile environment because of extreme human activities which have led to destruction of vegetation, soil erosion and decline of land productivity. To curb desertification, there have been many treatments proposed, with fruitful results. Most of these studies have focussed on hydrology, ecology and soils. There has been little use of palynology.
In the present study, the authors investigated Nanping Town, of Nanchuan District of Chongqing City, a representative karst area in the Mt. Jinfo with two kinds of good ecological protection and erious desertification area by sampling 14 different types of surface vegetation in order to study the palynomorph assemblages's differences and features.
The results show:(1) In the palynomorph assemblage of karst mountain, the trees dominate with the content to 34.38%-63.39%, herbs and ferns takes the 2nd place with the content about 32.04%-58.18%,and the shrub pollen about 6.08%-29.77%,Marsh herbs also to have few, is only 0.14%, which is the local basically the same as the modern vegetation; (2) In the palynomorph assemblage of rocky desertification areas, herbs and ferns dominate with the content to 46.40%-76.47%,the trees (mainly Pinus massoniana) takes the 2nd place with the content about 17.73%-46.84%,and the shrub pollen the least,about 5.79%-12.50%,that indicating a serious degradation of local vegetation; (3) Pollen of many calcicole, drought-tolerant, stone endogenous species is present in the karst rocky desertification, suggesting good potential for ecological restoration.