Soil seed banks have a important significance to the degraded vegetation restoration of
karst mountains. Using germina- tion
method, the distribution of soil seed bank of different land use systems such as natural forest, secondary forest, shrub-herb land, sloping cropland and fallow wasteland which located in different ecological evolve sequence were studied in Chongqing representa- tive
karst mountains. The results showed that there were abundant seeds stored in soils under different karst vegetations. There were 227.4~454.8 seeds for each of 40 cm×25 cm×15 cm soil unit. The
soil seed banks distributed in soil surface layers (0~5 cm) concen- tratively, the seeds of trees and shrubs distributed in soil surface layers (0~5 cm) mostly also. With the increase of land use intensity, the amount of woody species seeds decreases while herbage seeds increase, particularly, dominated by the farmland weed. The changes of land utilization are the most influence on secondary forest and its soil seed banks. Soil distribution environment such as gradient, karst gouge, karst gap, and soil water all influenced soil seeds density of karst mountains, the soil seeds density in different places or of different vegetation types differentiated obviously. Therefore, the heterogeneity of microhabitat type is the deciding fac- tor of soil seed banks distributing models.