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Species-dependent effects of habitat degradation in relation to seasonal distribution of migratory waterfowl in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway

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Abstract

Context

Migratory species’ resilience to landscape changes depends on spatial patterns of habitat degradation in relation to their migratory movements, such as the distance between breeding and non-breeding areas, and the location and width of migration corridors.

Objectives

We investigated to what extent the impact of habitat degradation depended on the seasonal distributions of migratory waterfowl.

Methods

Using logistic regression, we selected wetland sites for eight waterfowl species in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway (EAAF) by calculating the probabilities of species occurrence per wetland site in relation to environmental factors. We quantified landscape metrics related to habitat degradation within these wetland sites. We used general linear models to test for differences in the effects of habitat degradation on waterfowl species with different migration extents and at different latitudes.

Results

The patterns of habitat degradation differed spatially across the EAAF and affected species to a different degree. Species with shorter and broader migration corridors (Anser cygnoid and A. anser) could benefit from improved habitat conditions in the west of the EAAF. Species with longer and narrower migration corridors (Cygnus columbianus, A. fabalis, A. albifrons, A. erythropus, Anas crecca, and Anas acuta) were under higher risk of habitat degradation in the coastal regions of China and Japan.

Conclusions

Migratory species with longer and narrower migration corridors are more affected by habitat degradation, because they might have fewer alternative stopover sites at similar latitude. Our findings improve the understanding of species-specific effects of environmental changes on migratory species, and defines critical and endangered wetland sites, and vulnerable species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Yingying Wang (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) for help with the statistical analyses. We thank Zezhong Wang (Peking University, China), Zhouyuan Li (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), and Jing Li (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) for their suggestions on spatial scales and quantifications of habitat changes by landscape metrics. We thank Dorit Gross (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) for her suggestions on land cover products. Financial support was provided by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFA0604404), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41471347), and Chinese Scholarship Council (No. 201600090128).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modelling and Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yanjie Xu, Yali Si, Wenyuan Zhang & Peng Gong

  2. Resource Ecology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Yanjie Xu, Yali Si, Shenglai Yin, Mikhail Grishchenko, Herbert H. T. Prins & Willem F. de Boer

  3. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Wenyuan Zhang

  4. Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Qinghuayuan 1, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yali Si

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  1. Yanjie Xu
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Correspondence to Yali Si.

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Xu, Y., Si, Y., Yin, S. et al. Species-dependent effects of habitat degradation in relation to seasonal distribution of migratory waterfowl in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. Landscape Ecol 34, 243–257 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-00767-7

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