Abstract
The Poplar Ecological Retreat (PER) project in Dongting Lake wetland is an important measure in response to China’s ecological civilization construction policy, it aims to remove eastern cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) that artificial large-scale planted in this area and restore the natural state of the wetland, and has got a lot of attention by society and scholars. However, as one of the most important wintering place for migratory birds in the world, the impact of PER on migratory bird habitats in Dongting Lake wetland has not been evaluated. In this paper, we used the habitat suitability index model based on remote sensing to explore the impact of PER on the four mainly migratory bird guilds (Anatidae, Charadriidae, Ardeidae and Laridae) in Dongting Lake wetland. The suitability included four grades: poorly (0–25), generally (25–50), moderately (50–75), and highly (75–100). The results showed that the area of poplars in Dongting Lake wetland decreased significantly after PER was implemented. There was a negative correlation between poplar area and moderate grade habitat area of Anatidae and Ardeidae, and a positive correlation between poplar area and general grade habitat area. However, there was no significant change in different grades of habitat area of Charadriidae and Laridae after PER. Thus, PER improved the habitat suitability of Anatidae and Ardeidae, but had no significant effect on the suitability of habitat for Charadriidae and Laridae. These conclusions could provide reference for understanding the living conditions of Dongting Lake wetland waterbirds, determining the priority protection areas and maintaining wetland biodiversity.
Highlights
Wetland ecosystems are known for their capacity to support biodiversity, it covers only 6.4% of global area but supports 20% of known species on Earth (Wu et al, 2019a)
The poplar area from 2014 to 2016 is 235.76, 248.39 and 245.95 km2 respectively, which is close to the official data of 260 km2 (2016), showing the accuracy of our land cover interpretation work
Compared with maximum entropy (MaxEnt), general additive model (GAM), general liner model (GLM), boost regression tree (BRT) and other models that need these data (Zurell et al, 2012; Brambilla et al, 2020), Habitat suitability index (HSI) has no training process, so it needs to determine the weight in advance, and this weight directly affects the accuracy of the model, so we carefully determine the weight, combined with the analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight
Summary
Wetland ecosystems are known for their capacity to support biodiversity, it covers only 6.4% of global area but supports 20% of known species on Earth (Wu et al, 2019a). The study on habitat change of wetland birds is of great significance for bird biodiversity protection, and can provide reference for the health status of wetland ecosystem (Scholtz et al, 2017). Dongting Lake (DL) is the second largest freshwater lake in China It is on the list of Ramsar wetlands of international importance and an important stopover and overwintering site of migratory bird migration network in East Asia (Wu et al, 2019b; Wang et al, 2019). From 1996 to 2013, the poplar planting area in the West DL wetland increased by 9 times, and has become one of the main local landscapes (Jing et al, 2016), which introduces great potential ecological risk to DL wetland (Yanxia et al, 2014)
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