Abstract
Based on ecological theories, this research integrated qualitative and quantitative methods to do regional classification for bamboo in Zhejiang Province. We chose 69 cities and counties as investigated subjects. The Index System was constructed by integrating factors related to growth and distribution of bamboo, which is classified as ecological and economic indices, and all indices were standardized after filtering out redundant indices using a correlation analysis. The ecological factors included rainfall in bamboo shooting time, average annual rainfall, average temperatures in the hottest month and in the coldest month, extreme coldest temperature, accumulated temperature(≥ 10℃), accumulated days (≤ -5℃), average annual wind speed, longitude and latitude, and the economic factors were peasant population, population structure, population density, per capita GDP, forest area, forestry contribution, to do clustering analysis. The results showed that 69 cities and counties can be classified into six types, consisting of four sub-types, namely (Ⅰ)the north-easten hilly, plain and low mountainous division, including (Ⅰa)the plain sub-division, (Ⅰb)the hilly and low mountainous sub-division; (Ⅱ)the north-westen mountainous division; (Ⅲ)the middle hilly, basin and lowe mountainous division; (Ⅳ)the south-westen basin low mountainous division; (Ⅴ)the south easten coastal hilly, plain and low mountainous division, including (Ⅴa)the plain sub-division, (Ⅴb)the hilly and low mountainous sub-division); (Ⅵ)the easten penisular division.