Based on three scenes of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite images acquired on June 26, 1994, 12 land cover types were identified by the supervised classification techniques. The precipitation, runoff, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data of six catchments were accumulated from April to September in 1992September in , 1993September in , and 1995. A new eco-hydrological index, expressed by the difference between precipitation and runoff divided by the product of precipitation and NDVI, was used in this study to represent the eco-hydrological functions of different catchments. The results were: (1) The selected six catchments at the upstream of Minjiang River, China were different in landscape patterns in terms of landscape type and cover. There were higher contagion, lower edge density and diversity index in the Shouxi catchments and lower contagion, higher edge density and diversity index in the Zagunao catchments. (2) Eco-hydrological indexes had remarkable differences among different catchments. The highest eco-hydrological index was found in the Shouxi catchments, which indicated higher precipitation holding capacity of vegetation therein. While the lower eco-hydrological index was found in the Zagunao catchments, which indicated its lower precipitation holding capacity of vegetation. (3) High correlation was detected between the landscape indexes and eco-hydrological indexes. Eco-hydrological index was positively correlated with landscape contagion in contrast with the negative correlation with landscape diversity and edge density.

Based on a comprehensive literature review, we analyzed the spatiotemporal pattern of the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) population dynamics during the past century, and proposed a set of strategies and measures for conserving this endangered species from the perspectives of landscape ecology and sustainability science. The Amur tiger is a keystone species in the region of Russia Far East, Eastern Mongolia, Northeastern China, and North Korea, and its population declined dramatically during the past century, from the historical record of 3,000 to the current low level of about 500 because of different kinds of anthropogenic disturbances. The extant tiger population is distributed mainly in the Russia Far East region, including one large habitat area along the Sikhote Mountain and two smaller habitat patches near the Russia-China border. A small number of tiger individuals are also found in several small isolated habitat patches in northeastern China. The primary causes for the decline of the tiger population were poaching, habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation. The scarcity of prey and wars were also responsible for the decrease in the tiger population. To better conserve this endangered species, we propose the following strategies and measures: to establish a long-term monitoring platform; to strictly prohibit tiger poaching and restrict forest logging, hunting, and building roads and other artificial structures within the tiger distribution areas; and to build animal movement corridors among reserves and across the China-Russia border. To achieve these goals, large-scale land use planning and habitat pattern optimization are needed, and conservation goals must be integrated with 生 物 多 样 性 Biodiversity Science 第 17 卷 the overall goal of sustainable development in the region that simultaneously considers environmental, economic, and social factors based on the principles of landscape ecology and sustainability science.

LiDAR (light detection and ranging), a fairly new active remote sensing technology, is being widely used in the field of animal ecology by more and more scholars due to the recent development where forest parameters can be extracted and inverted from LiDAR. In this paper, we review the advances in forest parameter extraction from LiDAR and its many applications in studying wildlife habitat. We also analyze current research on forest parameter inversion algorithms based on LiDAR, mainly in forestry research, though we lack quantitative parameters related to the ecological significance of animals. Because few studies have applied LiDAR technology to animal ecology research in China, we consider foreign research in this field in three categories: (1) The relationship between species habitat selection and three-dimensional forest structure; (2) Three-dimensional habitat mapping; (3) Biodiversity assessment and species distribution model prediction. Compared with traditional methods, the high-precision three-dimensional structure information provided by LiDAR can significantly improve the efficacy of monitoring animal habitat quality and biodiversity and the modelling accuracy of species distribution models. These advancements contribute to deeper understanding of species habitat selection and the clustering process mechanism. However, the studies that utilize LiDAR to date have mainly focused on previously known ecological relationships, especially the •综述• © 1022 生 物 多 样 性 Biodiversity Science 第 27 卷 综述 relationship between canopy structure and species diversity. These studies fail to account for either forest understory habitat quality or biodiversity monitoring and evaluation. In short, the relationship between wildlife and its three-dimensional habitat needs to be further explored through analysis of LiDAR data. Future studies should focus on extracting three-dimensional structures of forest understories to improve the efficacy of monitoring habitat quality and biodiversity in the understory, and to provide standard quantitative indicators for the evaluation of animal ecology.

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