Increasing attention is being paid to land use changes in the mountain environments of southwest China. Yet it is essential to develop a network of relevant sites for long-term analysis and comparison. For this reason an important part of an ongoing ethno-ecological project being undertaken by the Kunming Institute of Botany is the establishment of permanent vegetation plots across key environmental gradients in northwest Yunnan. These sites are envisaged as a model for a network of permanent plots that will provide baseline data to help delineate the potential effects of climatic and land-use changes in this region. Northwest Yunnan is important—not only as a biologically and culturally significant area in its own right, but, since it forms the headwaters of major rivers in southeast Asia (i.e. the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Salweeri, and Yangtze), this region has imense significance as an upstream provider of ecosystem services.
