Abstract: The vertical structure illustration of community is a kind of vegetation scientific illustration that comprehensively expresses the structure, habitat characteristics and ecological relationships of plant communities. It has a high information capacity, visualization efficiency and communication efficiency, and is irreplaceable in vegetation research. However, traditional vertical structure illustration of community are limited by problems such as the lack of symbol systems, strong subjectivity in drawing and incomplete information expression, which hinder their effective practice and in-depth exploration of scientific value. This study, taking forest communities as the object, proposes a set of symbol systems and standardized drawing paradigms for vegetation scientific illustrations that integrate vegetation ecology, art design and digital technology, aiming to achieve precise visualization of the spatio-temporal attributes of community structure and habitat. Methods Based on the quadrat survey of typical subtropical vegetation types, combined with the double narrow-band drawing method of facing and parallel to the slope surface, a multi-level symbol system (6 major element modules, 21 types of graphic symbols) was designed, and innovatively introduced the drawing workflow of Chinese painting realistic techniques and digital drawing tools to form a standardized process from field sketches to digital drawings. Important findings A set of symbol systems, composition parameters and drawing techniques for the vertical structure illustration of forest community profiles was proposed, including three major symbol libraries of terrain, vegetation and soil, realizing the quantitative expression of community vertical stratification (trees/shrubs/herbs), individual morphology (diameter at breast height/crown width/branching angle) and habitat factors (slope/soil texture/litter thickness), clearly showing the spatial (vertical stratification and relative position of plant individu-als) and non-spatial (species composition, individual size and density, etc.) structure, interspecific relationships and community habitat information of the community. Through the drawing practice of 11 associations and 33 sub-graphs, its universality across vegetation types was verified. Conclusion This study starts from the composition and design of elements, standardizes the composition, symbol composition and expression techniques of the vertical structure illustration of forest community, breaks through the traditional schematic paradigm, and upgrades the vertical structure illustration of community to vegetation scientific illustrations with both scientific accuracy and artistic expression, providing standardized drawing tools for the compilation and research of "Vegetation of China"

Key words: Scientific illustration, Vegetation ecology, Community profile, Community structure, Habitat characteristics, Ex-pression techniques