Factors Driving the Abundance of Wintering Waterbirds in Coastal Areas of Guangdong Province, China

Xitao Yang,Ming Qu,Dongmei Yu,Chunxia Zhang,Xiaonan Niu,Zhizhao Duan,Guodong Hua,Shuangshuang Li,Huijian Hu

doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.808105

Abstract

The diverse habitat of the coastal areas of Guangdong, China, supports important waterbird populations, thereby contributing to the conservation of waterbirds in China and globally. The sensitivity of different waterbirds to environmental driving factors results in differences in habitat selection, which in combination affect waterbird abundance. This study investigated the effects of environmental and human disturbance factors on the abundance of waterbirds based on a survey of waterbirds in coastal areas of Guangdong Province, China. Redundancy analysis (RDA) was mainly used to study the relationships between the abundance of waterbirds and environmental and human factors. The results showed that the areas of mangrove and tidal flats were the main factors driving the abundance of shorebirds and open water waterbirds, whereas the areas of mangrove and water bodies were the main factors driving the abundance of wading birds and waterfowl, respectively. Road length and the areas of construction land were found to have negative effects on the abundance of waterbirds. A waterbird protection and management strategy was proposed based on the results.

Highlights

Global waterbird diversity has shown a declining trend in recent decades, which has been attributed to a changing natural environment and human disturbance (Yasué, 2006; Ma et al, 2014; Hamza et al, 2015; Tavares et al, 2015; Wei et al, 2017; Jackson et al, 2021)
The survey conducted in the present study identified 80 species, accounting for ∼34.78% of coastal waterbird species (230 species) in China
The results of the field survey indicate that the coastal areas of Guangdong Province play a key role in protecting the biodiversity of waterbirds in China and around the world

Summary

Introduction

Global waterbird diversity has shown a declining trend in recent decades, which has been attributed to a changing natural environment and human disturbance (Yasué, 2006; Ma et al, 2014; Hamza et al, 2015; Tavares et al, 2015; Wei et al, 2017; Jackson et al, 2021). Previous studies have shown that waterbirds in coastal areas are affected by environmental factors and human disturbance (Ge et al, 2006; Yasué, 2006; Hamza, 2020; Wang et al, 2020). These factors include the areas of water (Wang et al, 2020), mangrove (Acevedo and Aide, 2008; Huang et al, 2012; Mancini et al, 2018), tidal flat (Burger, 2018), and aquaculture ponds (Walton et al, 2015; Wei et al, 2017; Fonseca and Navedo, 2020; Wang et al, 2020), as well as roads and land for construction

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion