Abstract:

Abstract   Protective maturity is the key in protective forest management. Based on reviewing studies of progresses and questions of protective maturity, the authors point out that it is in a perfect state that forest was previously regarded as a pure, natural good. The factor of disturbance must be taken into account in our understanding of protective maturity for protective forest, especially nowadays with disturbance anywhere. The model on transformation of protective benefit is presented in this paper. The relationship between disturbance and protective maturity is analyzed and discussed with modeling, and a case study of soil and water conservation forest in western Liaoning Province. The authors argued that some protective forests can reach no, one, or more times protective maturity depending on the type, degree, continuance time of disturbance and other factors.