Dynamics and integrity of wetland network in estuary

The increasing fragmentation and degradation tendency of estuarine wetlands due to rapid urbanization in coastal areas exert the urgent need to quantify the structural characteristic of wetland network, which involves the fragmentized wetland patches for wetland restoration and conservation. Although wetland networks have already been used for conservation planning on a regional scale, the variation of connectivity and structural characteristic has not been well studied. Therefore, this study gathered data from Landsat TM/ETM + images to construct the wetland network and employed the graph theoretical analysis to characterize the network evolution, structural connectivity changes, and network integrity alteration in the Pearl River Estuary, South China. The wetland network integrity was defined in the study, including structural connectivity and several functional attributes, the variation of six generated networks during 1979 to 2009 was analyzed as well. The wetland network exhibited a weakening topology over time, which is indicated by a significant decrease in the degree distribution, connectivity, and clustering coefficient. The diminishing trends of wetland network integrity reveal that although the latest wetland network can still protect the regional environment, the weakening phenomenon in its topology and integrity would reduce the ability of estuarine wetland network to resist external interference.