Habitat suitability assessment for Saunders's Gull (Saundersilarus saundersi) in the Yellow River Delta, China

Abstract

The Yellow River Delta (YRD) is a key breeding place for Saunders's Gull (Saundersilarus saundersi), one of the vulnerable birds in the world. Thus, a thorough understanding of the key environmental factors influencing its suitable habitat holds great value for its conservation. Previous researches focused on Saunders's Gull's population changes and habitat features of breeding places in the nature reserve. However, its habitat suitability in the whole YRD has not been studied systematically, hindering the formulation of macro-protection policies to a certain extent. On the basis of occurrence records and environmental variables, we constructed an optimized MaxEnt model using the ‘kuenm’ R package to investigate the potential distribution of suitable habitat for the Saunders's Gull in the YRD. Results showed that the ideal hyperparameters for the MaxEnt model were a feature combination of linear and quadratic terms, and the regularization multiplier of 0.6 after optimization, indicated a high level of prediction accuracy. The environmental factors that had a significant effect on the Saunders's Gull's distribution were land use and land cover, percentage of beach saline–alkali land (PLAND_55) and distance to coastline (D_coastline). The highly suitable habitat had an area of 258.56 km2, of which 66.63% was located within the YRD National Nature Reserve. The management of constructed wetlands should be combined with the protection of natural wetlands to avoid the disadvantage of ‘isolated island-type’ protection. The study provides insights into the quantitative relationship between waterfowl and their habitat, providing support for the sustainable development of the YRD, with certain practical significance.