We determined the possible extent of forest distribution before reclamation on the basis of satellite-based land use data and global potential vegetation data. Then, topography(including altitude and slope), production potential of climate(including light, temperature and water) were selected and their relationships with cropland spatial distribution were quantified to create land suitability for cultivation model and historical forest spatially explicit reconstruction model. And the models were used to reconstruct forest cover in Southwest China of five time points between 1724 and 1911 in the Qing Dynasty. The results show that:
(1) The model we designed is reasonable on the whole and the forest cover can be recreated well by the model;
(2) The RFT(i.e., the ratio of forest area to total land area of each administrative unit,hereafter RFT in short) of Southwest China decreased from 54.7% in 1724 to 27.8% in 1911.And the changes were mainly found in the Sichuan Basin, the central-eastern part of Yunnan and most parts of Guizhou.
(3) In terms of the change tendency of the percent of grids in each interval, the percentages of grids whose RFT is less than 10% increased by 31% while the percentages of grids whose RFT is more than 80% decreased by 13%.
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