Effects of landscape structure, habitat and human disturbance on birds: A case study in East Dongting Lake wetland

The study of birds responded to the environmental factors will contribute to the understanding of habitat selection and biodiversity conservation. East Dongting Lake, which is an important wintering habitat and pathway for migratory birds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, was taken as a case study. The aims of this study were to identify: (1) whether there were any relationships between environmental variables and bird species in East Dongting Lake wetland; (2) which variable(s) could be the critical one(s) markedly correlating with the birds. We applied direct multivariate analysis combined with partial analysis to quantify the effects of environmental variables on bird species in this study. The results indicated that landscape structure (explaining 40.95% of the variation), habitat index and human disturbance (75.58%, 51.97%, respectively) were significantly associated with the bird abundance while the individual effect of habitat-level variables was more evident than the others. Among the seven chosen environmental variables, five critical variables markedly related to the richness of birds (P < 0.05) with the impact intensity in the order of sedge area > water area > reed area > patch density > distance to residents. No obvious indication was found in our study to prove that landscape diversity and distance to road had significant correlations with the bird species abundance. The results would provide potential insights into protecting the bird diversity and the restoration of the bird habitat in East Dongting Lake wetland.