Abstract
The Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China and possesses unique wetland and plentiful biological resources. Because of the dual influence of the Five Rivers and Yangtze River, the water level of Poyang Lake changes seasonally, which has important influence on the local ecosystem. A better knowledge of the spatiotemporal pattern of water body and bird habitats is important for bird diversity conservation and wetland management. In this study, we collected six Landsat images in both winter and summer seasons from 1995 to 2009. These images were processed in both ERDAS Imagine 9.1 and ArcGIS 9.3 by image registration, geometric rectification and classification based on image characteristics and field survey data. The bird habitats in Poyang Lake wetland were classified into six types as shoal water, middle-depth water, deep water, grassland, sand land and mudflat. The results showed: (1) In winter seasons, grassland, mudflat and shoal water were the three main bird habitats in winter (totally around 70 %); water body area increased 13.6 % from 1995 to 1999 and then decreased 11.8 % from 1999 to 2007, and the mudflat decreased all the time from 1995 to 2007. (2) In summer seasons, water area occupied more than 60 % of the whole area; due to high water level, most plants were submerged and not suitable for bird feeding; shoal water area and grasslands were the two main bird habitats in summer. Compared with changes in summer seasons, all bird habitats changed obviously in winter seasons. Based on our research, we suggests that it is important to monitor the change in water level, area of water body, area of grassland and mudflat in future research by incorporating related precipitation data, water station record, multispectral and multi-temporal remote sensing images in the Poyang Lake since these habitats are key for migrating birds.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bancroft GT, Gawlik DE, Rutche K (2002) Distribution of wading birds relative to vegetation and water depths in the northern everglades of Florida, USA. Waterbirds 25(3):265–277
Beever EA (2006) Linking the concept of scale to studies of biological diversity: evolving approaches and tools. Diver Distrib 12(3):229–235
Betts MG, Diamond AW, Forbes GJ, Villardd MA, Gunne JS (2006) The importance of spatial autocorrelation, extent and resolution in predicting forest bird occurrence. Ecol Model 191(2):197–224
Desgranges JL, Ingram J, Drolet B (2006) Modelling wetland bird response to water level changes in the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River hydrosystem. Environ Monit Assess 113(1–3):329–365
Ge ZM, Wang TH, Zhou X, Zhao P, Shi WY (2006) Factor-analysis on habitat-selection of the avian community at the artificial wetlands behind the Chongming Dongtan seawall during winter and spring. Zool Res 27(2):144–150 (in Chinese)
Gillespie T (2008) Measuring and modelling biodiversity from space. Prog Phys Geogr 32(2):203–221
Guo H, Hu Q, Jiang T (2008) Annual and seasonal stream flow responses to climate and land-cover changes in the Poyang Lake basin, China. J Hydrol 355(1–4):106–122
Hirzel H (2008) Habitat suitability modelling and niche theory. J Appl Ecol 45(5):1372–1381
Hu Q, Feng S, Guo H, Chen GY, Jiang T (2007) Interactions of the Yangtze River flow and hydrologic processes of the Poyang Lake, China. J Hydrol 347(1–2):90–100
Hua N, Ma ZJ, Ma Q, Song GX, Tang CD, Li B, Chen JK (2009) Water bird use of aquacultural ponds in winter at Chongming Dongtan. Acta Ecol Sin 29(12):6342–6350 (in Chinese)
Huang P, Ou-Yang S, Ruan LZ, Wang ZR, Pan HC, Hu BH, Wu XP (2009) Studies on the community biodiversity of summer birds in Nanjishan Wetland Nature Reserve. J Nanchang Univ (Nat Sci) 33(6):585–590 (in Chinese)
Hui FM, Xu B, Huang HB, Gong P (2008) Modeling spatial-temporal change of Poyang Lake using multi-temporal Landsat imagery. Int J Remote Sens 29(20):5767–5784
Jiang T, Shi YF (2003) Global warming and its consequences in Yangtze River floods and damages. Adv Earth Sci 18:277–284 (in Chinese)
Jiang L, Bergen KM, Brown DG, Zhao TT, Tian Q, Qi SH (2008) Land-cover change and vulnerability to flooding near Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China. PE&RS 74(6):775–786
Liu WB (2007) Study on the impacts of the three gorges reservoir running in initial stages on the trend of high water level in the Poyang Lake. MSc dissertation, Nanchang University, Nanchang (in Chinese)
Liu CL, Tan YJ, Lin LS, Tao HN, Tan HR (2011) The wetland water level process and habitat of migratory birds in Lake Poyang. J Lake Sci 23(1):129–135 (in Chinese)
Luo H, GaoYY YuYZ, Wu XD, Cao R, Yi WS, Wen SB, Hao NZ, Yang RX, Gao X, Mei Y, Guo YJ (2010) Research of the relationship between birds and aquatic plants’ transparency and water of Poyang Lake. Jiangxi Sci 28(4):559–563 (in Chinese)
Maheswaran G, Rahmani AR (2001) Effects of water level changes and wading bird abundance on the foraging behaviour of blacknecked storks Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus in Dudwa National Park, India. J Biosci 26(3):373–382
Rao S, Fang JY, Cui HT, Lei CG (2002) Spatio-temporal changes in patterns of land use in Poyang Lake during the last decade. Res Environ Yangtze Basin 11(5):421–426 (in Chinese)
Schleupner C, Link PM (2008) Potential impacts on important bird habitats in Eiderstedt (Schleswig-Holstein) caused by agricultural land use changes. Appl Geogr 4:237–247
Shankman D, Heim BD, Song J (2006) Flood frequency in China’s Poyang Lake region: trends and teleconnections. Int J Climatol 26(9):1255–1266
Soberón J (2007) Grinnellian and Eltonian niches and geographic distributions of species. Ecol Lett 10(12):1115–1123
Tang J (2007) Winter and spring avian communities in southern Hongze Lake wetland, MSc dissertation, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing (in Chinese)
Taylor PJ, Walker GR, Hodgson G, Hatton TJ, Correll RL (1996) Testing of a GIS model of Eucalyptus largiflorens health on a semiarid, saline floodplain. J Environ Manag 20(4):553–564
Wang L, Li MS, Feng HM (2007) Feeding habitat of oriental white stork in autumn in Tumuji of Inner Mongolia. J Northeast Fores Univ 35(8):52–53, 57 (in Chinese)
Xia SX, Yu XB, Fan N (2010) The wintering habitats of migrant birds and their relationship with water level in Poyang Lake, China. Res Sci 32(11):2072–2078
Xie DM, Zheng P, Deng HB, Zhao JZ, Fan ZW, Fang Y (2011) Landscape responses to changes in water levels at Poyang Lake wetlands. Acta Ecol Sin 31(5):1269–1276 (in Chinese)
Yang WK, Zhong WQ, Gao XY (2000) A review of studies on avian habitat selection. Arid Zone Res 17(3):71–75 (in Chinese)
Yang X, Sun F, Ren N (2003) The eco-environmental problems and rehabilitation strategies in the areas around Qinghai Lake. Areal Res Dev 22(2):39–42 (in Chinese)
Zhang GX, Zhu SY (2007) Seasonal change of the water area for the Poyang Lake based on RS and GIS technologies. South-to-North Water Transf Water Sci Tech 5(5):39–40 (in Chinese)
Zhang XR, Ni CY, Shao MQ, Jian MF (2009) Preliminary study on the bird diversity of three typical habitats in Nanchang suburb. Ecol Sci 28(3):253–257 (in Chinese)
Zhao XJ, Sun ZY, Gao Y (2010) Three gorges reservoir operation effects on water level and ecological function of Poyang Lake. China Three Gorges Trib 5:19–22 (in Chinese)
Zheng GM (1995) Ornithology. Beijing Normal University Press, Beijing (in Chinese)
Zuckerberg B (2010) Thresholds in the long-term responses of breeding birds to forest cover and fragmentation. Bio Conserv 143(4):952–962
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. A000080947). We would like to thank Environmental & Ecological Science Data Center for West China, National Natural Science Foundation of China (http://westdc.westgis.ac.cn) for providing Landsat images. And thanks to Hao Jing from Tsinghua University for her field work in data collection.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This article is part of a Topical Collection in Environmental Earth Sciences on “Environment and Health in China II”, guest edited by Tian-Xiang Yue, Cui Chen, Bing Xu and Olaf Kolditz.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yang, P., Liu, X. & Xu, B. Spatiotemporal pattern of bird habitats in the Poyang Lake based on Landsat images. Environ Earth Sci 75, 1230 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-5941-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-5941-6