Assessment of the Suitability of Wintering Anatidae Habitats before and after Impoundment in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to understand the distribution of and changes in the habitats suitable for Anatidae wintering in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR), China, and to explore the impact of the impoundment during different impoundment periods. Based on species occurrence data for four dominant species of Anatidae and environmental factors, a maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model was used to analyze the suitability of habitats during five impoundment periods. The results show that the main factors affecting Anatidae distribution were temperature and roads before the Three Gorges Project (TGP) and elevation after the TGP. After the TGP, the area of the suitable habitat declined rapidly and then gradually increased with increasing water level. After impoundment, the primary area of increased habitat suitability was the main stream of the Yangtze River from Changshou District to Yunyang County and its tributary in the Kaizhou area. Among the habitats, the central water regions were more suitable than the marginal shoal areas. Anatidae habitats in the TGRR were distributed mainly within the Yangtze River main stream and the surrounding areas before the TGP, and the surrounding areas largely disappeared after the TGP, particularly in Chongqing City and Jiangjin District. In this context, it is challenging to create new protected areas within the habitat suitable for Anatidae in the main stream of the Yangtze River; we propose adding the Anatidae as conservation targets within the existing conservation agencies and implementing a waterbird monitoring program for scientific waterbird conservation and the sustainable development of the reservoir.

Spatiotemporal Changes in Waterfowl Habitat Suitability in the Caohai Lake Wetland and Responses to Human Activities

“…We evaluated the Caohai Lake wetland waterfowl habitat suitability over the last 20 years and examined the responses of the waterfowl to human activities. This method overcomes the heavy dependence on spatial information about the species for model construction that is seen in previous studies [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][54][55][56] and the difficulties in obtaining information about the species' spatial distribution [23,24,27,28]. Furthermore, many previous studies used the net water density to reflect the water resources and ignored the surface water [44,45], which is intimately associated with waterfowl nesting sites and food availability [57].…”

Assessing the Suitability of Habitats for Porphyrio porphyrio indicus and Amaurornis phoenicurus in Urban Wetlands of Peninsular Malaysia

“…Wang et al (2019) determined the suitable habitat for conserving the red-crowned crane and migratory waterfowls in the Nenjiang River basin of Northeast China. Li et al (2021) determined the wintering Anatidae habitats in the Gorges Reservoir Region, China. Nagy et al (2021) explored maximum entropy with other three statistical modelling techniques (generalised linear model, boosted regression tree gradient boosted machine) to assess the climate change impact on waterbird species in the African-Eurasian flyways.…”