Health Assessment of Platycladus orientalis Plantation in Xuzhou

In order to evaluate the health status of Platycladus orientalis plantations in Xuzhou Municipality, a forest health assessment index system was formulated by integrating 10 indexes such as the vertical structure of the community, canopy density, standing stock per unit area, forest regeneration, damage grade of forest pests, hazard index of forest fire, etc. According to the health assessment index system, and by means of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy mathematics method, the forest health status was divided into five classes, i.e., superior healthy, healthy, subhealthy, unhealthy and ill. 60 typical sample polts chosen from Xuzhou were evaluated by combining the sample plot survey with existing relative data. The results showed that the superior healthy sample plots accounted for 5%, health sample plots accounted for 15%, subhealthy sample plots accounted for 4333%, unhealthy sample plots accounted for 30%, and the ill sample plots accounted for 667% of the total 60 sample plots. It illustrated that the overall health grade of P. orientalis plantation in Xuzhou was subhealthy. It was proposed to increase the quantity and species of understory woody plants, conduct thinning in the overdensed sample plots, and open forest gaps to improve the health status of the P. orientalis plantations in Xuzhou.