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Habitat Changes for Breeding Waterbirds in Yancheng National Nature Reserve, China: A Remote Sensing Study

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Abstract

Remote sensing combined with ground surveying was employed to detect the change of Suaeda glauca (common seepweed) community for the core area of Yancheng National Nature Reserve (YNNR) of China, which is a unique breeding habitat for three study species: Larus saundersi (Saunder’s gull), Tringa tetanus (common redshank), and Sterna hirundo (common tern). Landsat TM data was used to quantify the changes of the S. glauca community between 1992, 2002, and 2007. The loss of this plant community was mainly associated with reclamation for aquaculture ponds from 1992 to 2002. Using the non-dense, mosaic pixel model from Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), we computed the coverage information of the S. glauca community. For each study species, the S. glauca vegetation coverage characteristics were determined from GPS locations of 407 nesting site separately. The mean vegetation coverage of nesting sites of L. saundersi, T. tetanus, and S. hirundo were 35.0 ± 6.8%, 52.2 ± 6.9% and 24.8 ± 3.6%, respectively. Over 15 years, coverage of S. glauca continuously increased due to an expansion of exotic Spartina alterniflora (smooth cord-grass) constraining early sucessional S. glauca. Eventually the S. glauca community may become too dense for nesting by L. saundersi and S. hirundo.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Nation Science Foundation of China (No. 40871188), the Conservation Fund for Saunder’s gull of the Department of Wildlife Conservation, State Forestry Administration of China, and the Data-sharing Network of Earth System Science-China Marsh Database (No. 2006DKA32300-16). We thank Yancheng National Nature Reserve for giving us permission to conduct this study. We are grateful to Dr. Birgita Hansen of Arthur Rylah Institute for the revision and useful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Three anonymous reviewers provided useful comments on the manuscript. Finally, we give special thanks to Monica Noon for her invaluable, voluntary help in improving the technical writing for this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 3195, Weishan Road, Gaoxin District, Changchun, 130012, Jilin, China

    Chunyue Liu, Shuqing Zhang, Xiaofeng Li & Zhaofei Wen

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquanlu, 100049, Beijing, China

    Chunyue Liu & Zhaofei Wen

  3. Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection, Key Laboratory of Forest Protection of State Forestry Administration, Chinese Academy of Forestry, No. 2, Dongxiaofu, Qinglongqiao, Haidian, 100091, Beijing, China

    Hongxing Jiang & Yunqiu Hou

  4. International Crane Foundation, World Center for the Study and Preservation of Cranes, Baraboo, WI 53913, Wisconsin, USA

    Liying Su

  5. School of Electrical & Information Technology, Changchun Institute of Technology, No. 395, Kuanping road, Changchun, 130012, Jilin, China

    Xin Pan

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  1. Chunyue Liu
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Correspondence to Shuqing Zhang.

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Chunyue Liu and Hongxing Jiang contributed equally to this paper.

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Liu, C., Jiang, H., Hou, Y. et al. Habitat Changes for Breeding Waterbirds in Yancheng National Nature Reserve, China: A Remote Sensing Study. Wetlands 30, 879–888 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-010-0070-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-010-0070-6

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