Towards Establishing Effective Protective Boundaries for the Lunan Stone Forest Using an Online Spatial Decision Support System

Abstract

The Lunan Stone Forest is the Worldʼs premier pinnacle karst landscape, and was established as a national park in 1982. The existing boundaries are essentially arbitrary, based on notional scenic value, and take into consideration neither the physical landscape nor the existing pattern of urban development. Moreover, the location of the boundaries is not clear to the local community, rendering them largely ineffective. Developing an online Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) potentially provides a way to establish protective boundaries that are meaningful from the perspective of karst science, yet also readily identifiable by the local community within the context of the existing urban fabric. The 7km2 “core area” of the Stone Forest Park is used to illustrate the use of the SDSS. Lunanski kaniti gozd je najlepši primer »kamnitega gozda« (shilin) na svetu in je bil 1982 razglašen za narodni park. Sedanje meje parka so bile dogovorjene na osnovi zaznavne pokrajinske vrednote in ne upoštevajo niti fizičnih lastnosti pokrajine niti obstoječega vzorca razvoja mesta. Še več, lokalnim skupnostim meje niso jasne in so zato še manj učinkovite. Z razvojem Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) na spletu je dano orodje, s pomočjo katerega bi bilo mogoče določiti meje varovanega območja, ki bi bile zadovoljujoče z vidika krasoslovja in sprejete s strani lokalnih skupnosti v skladu s sedanjim urbanim razvojem. Na 7 km2 osrednjega dela Kamnitega gozda je prikazana možnost uporabe SDSS.