Habitat use and selection by Red‐crowned Crane Grus japonensis in winter in Yancheng Biosphere Reserve, China

Abstract

We report the distribution and habitat selection by the Red-crowned Crane Grus japonensis in winter in the Yancheng Biosphere Reserve, China. Including original wetlands and artificial habitats, six types of habitat are used by the species: saltworks (salinas), fish ponds, reed beds, Wormwood Artemisia halodendron beaches, tidal grasslands and wheat fields. We compared the habitat availability with habitat use in each type.In winter, Red-crowned Crane preferentially used tidal grasslands and fish ponds. Saltworks, Wormwood beaches and wheat fields were avoided. The distribution of Red-crowned Crane in different types of habitat changed with the distribution of freshwater and with human activities.The Red-crowned Crane Grus japonensis is one of the most vulnerable bird species in the world (Collar et al.

Habitat use and distribution of the Ruddy ShelduckTadorna ferrugineain the wetland complex of Oued Righ (Algerian Sahara)

“…Habitat selection has been also noted in other species such as Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis macqueenii) (Heezik and Seddon 1999), Red-Crowned Cran (Grus japonensis) (Ma, Wan, and Tang 1999). Ruddy Shelducks showed marked preferences for certain habitats in the wetland complex of Oued Righ, particularly for middle-sized salt ponds with a high percentage of open water.…”

Habitat Changes for Breeding Waterbirds in Yancheng National Nature Reserve, China: A Remote Sensing Study

“…Land Cover Classification Based on natural vegetation succession (Ma and Wang 1999) and human land use types, we classified land cover types in the study area into nine categories: 1) grass land species (A. littorali and I. lindrical varnajor), 2) P. communis, 3) S. glauca, 4) S. alterniflora, 5) unvegetated marsh (referring to bare mudflat and open water within the vegetation communities), 6) river channels, 7) aquaculture ponds, 8) upper intertidal mudflats (referring to mudflats above −3 m seas level), and 9) lower intertidal mudflats (referring to mudflats from −3 to −6 m sea level). Traditional supervised classification methods, Maximum Likelihood Methods (MLC), and visual interpretations were all used under ENVI v4.5 (Zhang et al 2009).…”

“…1). Natural vegetation communities change from mudflats in the intertidal zone to Spartina alterniflora (smooth cord-grass), Suaeda glauca (common seepweed), grassland species (including Aeluropus littoralis and Imperatacy lindrical varnajor), and Phragmites communis (common reed) further inland (Ma and Wang 1999). Due to the human land use and expansion of introduced S. alterniflora, which was introduced into Yancheng coastal wetland in 1982 (Zhong et al 1985), natural wetland communities have been extensively degraded or lost, especially the S. glauca community (Liu et al 2009a).…”

The effectiveness of the zoning of China's protected areas

“…The potential benefit to these zoning designations is that they may provide a set of guidelines for spatial arrangements of multiple and sometimes competing uses across space. This model aspires to enhance biodiversity protection by acknowledging and accommodating the needs of local communities (Ma et al, 1998, Naughton-Treves et al, 2005, Ma et al, 2009, Coetzer et al, 2014. This paper examines the efficacy of this zoning.…”