Regionalization of Chinese medicinal plants based on spatial data mining

Climate factors govern the distribution of plant species which is the indicator of the corresponding region climate. Spatial clustering methods are an important component of spatial data mining. We obtained distribution data of more than 100 Chinese genuine regional herb plants to serve as basic data for spatial analyze. Spatial clustering algorithm based on spatial contiguity relations in GIS was used to group China counties into seven regions distinctive in climate and ecology features. The clustering results showed the eco-environment has great effects on geo-authenticities of traditional Chinese medicine materials.