School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China; Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210023, China; Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing 210023, China.
School of Marine Science and Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Sep 1;785:147316. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.147316. Epub 2021 Apr 24.
The conservation level of rare waterbirds reflects the quality of the regional ecological environment and wetlands, and suitable habitat patches and good environmental conditions are bases to support the activities of rare species in habitats. Establishing these conditions is also an important goal of habitat landscape and functional restoration. However, lack of these conditions limits population protection and habitat restoration of rare species. Based on the random forest (RF) algorithm and threshold indicator taxa analysis (TITAN), this paper performed habitat suitability assessment and environmental variable threshold analysis of rare waterbird species in Yancheng coastal wetlands. The results showed that the suitable area proportion of three waterbird species at different habitat sites was less than 20%. The unsuitable area proportions of red-crowned cranes and oriental storks at the CA habitat site were the highest, reaching 86.73% and 85.17%, respectively. In addition, analysis of the importance of environmental variables showed that the main influencing variables affecting the suitable habitat distribution of the three rare waterbirds were habitat type (T_hab), habitat area (A_hab), vegetation coverage (P_fvc), distance to farmland (D_far), distance to reeds (D_ree), ponds density (Ponds), distance to water surface (D_wat) and distance to main roads or seawalls (D_swa). These variables covered the type, area, coverage and distance indicators. With the exception of D_far, Ponds and D_swa, rare waterbirds had response thresholds to each environmental indicator, and these results supported the restoration of landscape structure and function of each habitat site. This study emphasized the importance of foods, water resources and hidden conditions for habitat selection in rare waterbirds. Finally, we proposed the maintenance and restoration patterns of the landscape structure and function of rare waterbird habitats, which are available for other coastal tidal wetlands.
珍稀水鸟的保护水平反映了区域生态环境和湿地的质量，适宜的生境斑块和良好的环境条件是支持物种在生境中活动的基础。建立这些条件也是生境景观和功能恢复的重要目标。然而，缺乏这些条件限制了珍稀物种的种群保护和生境恢复。本研究基于随机森林（RF）算法和阈值指示种分析（TITAN），对盐城滨海湿地珍稀水鸟的生境适宜性进行了评估，并对环境变量进行了阈值分析。结果表明，三种水鸟在不同生境地点的适宜区比例均小于 20%。CA 生境地点的丹顶鹤和东方白鹳不适宜区比例最高，分别达到 86.73%和 85.17%。此外，环境变量重要性分析表明，影响三种珍稀水鸟适宜生境分布的主要影响变量是生境类型（T_hab）、生境面积（A_hab）、植被覆盖度（P_fvc）、距农田距离（D_far）、距芦苇地距离（D_ree）、池塘密度（Ponds）、距水面距离（D_wat）和距主路或海堤距离（D_swa）。这些变量涵盖了类型、面积、覆盖度和距离指标。除了 D_far、Ponds 和 D_swa 之外，珍稀水鸟对每个环境指标都有响应阈值，这些结果支持了每个生境地点的景观结构和功能的恢复。本研究强调了食物、水资源和隐藏条件对珍稀水鸟栖息地选择的重要性。最后，我们提出了珍稀水鸟栖息地景观结构和功能维护与恢复模式，可供其他沿海潮汐湿地借鉴。
