The Identification and Assessment of Habitats of Threatened Birds in Plain

The threatened birds distributed in Beijing are mainly located in plain areas, which are reserved for urban development. Therefore, it is quite necessary to incorporate threatened bird protection in the urban management. This paper focuses on the studies of the 24 species of threatened birds in the plain areas of Beijing. It has identified five categories of I-class avian habitats and 17 II-class avian habitats in the plain areas of Beijing, using artificial visual interpretation of the high definition satellite images according to the habitat selection of each species, as well as the national standard for classification of land use to get the distribution map of avian habitats. Then, it applies the species distribution model of the 24 threatened birds to mask the distribution map of the avian habitats, which produces the predicted occupied range for each species in the plain areas of Beijing. The richness pattern of threatened birds is generated by overlaying the predicted occupied ranges of the threatened birds. The result reveals that the highest richness of birds occurs in water bodies. GAP analysis is done by overlaying the richness pattern of the threatened birds and the National/Municipal Natural Reserves (NNR/MNR) maps. We have found that first, the NNR/MNR of Beijing are mainly distributed in the mountainous areas, which cannot effectively protect the threatened birds. Second, the protection of the threatened birds is closely related to urban construction and green space management in the plain areas. Using the method of zonal statistics, we have figured up the average number of species of threatened birds distributed in each type of habitats, as the indicator for conservation priority. We have found that pools, reservoirs, ponds, bottomlands, shoals and marshes are priorities for conservation. So it is crucial to synthetically protect the avian habitats under permissible conditions. This study is the first of its kind to put forward suggestions of space reference and management for the protection of the threatened birds in Beijing urban areas.