NDLI: Conserving the Sacred Medicine Mountains: A Vegetation Analysis of Tibetan Sacred Sites in Northwest Yunnan

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Anderson, Danica M. Salick, Jan Moseley, Robert K. Xiaokun, Ou
Copyright Year	2005
Abstract	Mount Kawa Karpo of the Menri ('Medicine Mountains' in Tibetan), in the eastern Himalayas, is one of the most sacred mountains to Tibetan Buddhists. Numerous sacred sites are found between 1900 and 4000 m, and at higher elevations the area as a whole is considered a sacred landscape. Religious beliefs may affect the ecology of these sacred areas, resulting in unique ecological characteristics of importance to conservation; recent studies have demonstrated that sacred areas can often play a major role in conservation. The goal of this study is to preliminarily analyze the vegetation of sacred areas in the Menri region using existing vegetation maps and a Geographical Information System (GIS) for remote assessment. Sacred sites are compared to random points in the landscape, in terms of: elevation, vegetation, and nearness to villages; species composition, diversity, and richness; and frequency of useful and endemic plant species. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordination reveals that sacred sites differ significantly in both useful species composition (p=0.034) and endemic species composition (p=0.045). Sacred sites are located at lower elevations, and closer to villages, than randomly selected, non-sacred sites (p< 0.0001), and have higher overall species richness (p=0.033) and diversity (p=0.042). In addition, the high-elevation (> 4000 m) areas of the mountain - a sacred landscape - are found to have significantly more endemics than low-elevation areas (p<0.0001). These findings represent an initial analysis of sacred sites and suggest that sacred sites in the Menri region may be ecologically and ethnobotanically unique.
Starting Page	3065
Ending Page	3091
Page Count	27
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09603115
Journal	Biodiversity and Conservation
Volume Number	14
Issue Number	13
e-ISSN	15729710
Language	English
Publisher	Kluwer Academic Publishers
Publisher Date	2005-01-01
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Biodiversity Ethnobotany Geographical information system (GIS) Indigenous land management Meili Quantitative conservation biology Sacred geography Sacred sites Tibetan medicine Yunnan Evolutionary Biology Tree Biology Plant Sciences
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation

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