Conservation and restoration efforts have promoted increases in shorebird populations and the area and quality of their habitat in the Yellow River Delta, China

ABSTRACT

Conservation policies have been formulated for coastal wetlands in China, and exploration of conservation effectiveness based on waterbirds and their habitat is important for guiding conservation actions. We characterized the effects of conservation efforts on shorebird diversity, habitat area and quality using long-term remote sensing data, and shorebird survey data in the Yellow River Delta. From 1997 to 2021, habitat area, quality and population number significantly declined by 49.8% (r = −0.72, p < 0.05), 13.6% (r = −0.72, p < 0.05) and 60.67% (R²= 0.77, p < 0.05). Before 2012, habitat area (decreased by 38.2%, r = −0.62, p > 0.05, slope = −0.25), quality (decreased by 10.53%, r = −0.68, p > 0.05, slope = −0.008), and population size (significantly decreased by 94.5%, r = −0.95, p < 0.05, slope = −7874.3) declined, and the decline in habitat area significantly contributed to population reductions (r = 0.79, p < 0.05). Since 2012, habitat area (increased by 14.3%, r = 0.71, p > 0.05, slope = 0.12), quality (increased by 17.12%, r = 0.83, p > 0.05, slope = 0.01), and population size (increased by 8.34%, R²= 0.29, p > 0.05) slightly increased. The coefficients of variation for habitat area and quality, and population size were smaller after 2012 than before 2012. These results suggest that conservation actions maintained the stability of waterbird populations and their habitat; additional actions are needed to mediate the conservation of other degraded habitats along coastal wetlands.

KEYWORDS:

• Shorebirds
• habitat degradation
• loss of shorebird diversity
• conservation and restoration
• Yellow River Delta

Acknowledgments

We thank Liu, Y. from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences for discussion and providing literature that helped improve the Methods and Results sections of the manuscript. We thank Dehua Mao for providing Spartina alterniflora distribution data.

Author contributions

X. Y. and H. D. planned and designed the research; H. D. and S. X collected data; H. D. analyzed data and wrote the manuscript; and H. D. and X. Y. collaboratively revised the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available from Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22239655.

Additional information

Funding

This research was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF0802400), the Science and technology basic resources survey project (2021FY101002), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42101105).