Identification of ecological corridors for waterbirds in wetlands in Northeast China
Ecological corridor,as a biodiversity conservation model in response to climate change,has become one of the hotspots of international ecological research.But so far,relatively little research has been done on ecological corridors for waterbirds.In order to construct ecological corridors for wetland waterbirds,the Northeast China has been selected as the research area,four kinds of wetland waterbirds(Grus japonensis,Grus grus,Cygnus Cygnus,Mergus squamatus)were chosen as the research objects.The hybrid model method combining the least resistance model and the current theory was applied to construct the ecological corridors for these four kinds of wetland waterbirds.The results of waterbird ecological corridors based on the least resistance model showed that the least cost routes of the four waterbird ecological corridors were all the routes that connect adjacent core habitat patches,but their number,distribution and maximum width were different.The results of the waterbird ecological corridors based on the current theory showed that the current density and the number of pinch points were different.The actual observation data of four species of waterbirds were used to validate the results of ecological corridor simulation.The validation results showed that most of the waterfowl occurrence points were not far from the least cost route of waterfowl,indicating that the least cost route partly generated based on the least resistance model was the most likely place to become the ecological corridor of waterfowl.Most of the waterfowl occurrence points coincided with the pinch areas of waterfowl,indicating that the pinch areas generated based on the current theory were the most likely places to become the waterfowl ecological corridors.The methods and results adopted in this study are an attempt to construct the waterbird ecological corridors at regional scale,which can be used as a reference for the construction of multi-species waterbird ecological corridors in other countries.
ecological corridorwetland waterfowlleast resistance modelcurrent theoryNortheast of China