Abstract: Forest naturalness is an important indicator in describing forest status and in assessing forest landscape conservation, being widely used in nature-approximating forest management and vegetation restoration and reconstruction. Based on the analyses on the concepts, classifications, and evaluation methods of forest naturalness, this paper proposed that forest feature and human disturbance should be taken into account in the definition of forest naturalness, and an holistic approach combined with quantitative indictors and qualitative description should be considered in the assessment of forest naturalness based on the analysis of reference forest of potential natural vegetation. The standards of assessing forest naturalness at stand scale should be established to decide which attributes to be considered and how to weight these attributes according to different vegetation types, although there was a formed uniform methodology. The assessment of forest naturalness at landscape and regional scales might be more objective and practical for forest conservation and management than the assessment at stand scale, and thus, the naturalness attributes of different components of forest stands, related indictor system, and evaluation methodology at landscape and regional scales should be further studied.

Key words: Global consequences, Prevention and control strategies, Ecosystem, Biodiversity, Risk analysis