Assessment of Waterbird Habitat Importance and Identification of Conservation Gaps in Anhui Province

Simple Summary Wetlands are one of the most important habitats for waterbirds. Due to the increase in human activities, waterbird habitats have been severely disturbed. Limited availability of human and natural resources makes effective habitat protection particularly important. Therefore, in this study, we developed an index system to evaluate habitat waterbird importance in Anhui Province based on habitat status. This allowed us to identify distribution and change patterns over time in important waterbird habitats. We also examined gaps in the protection of these crucial habitats and identified the key environmental influences. We found that Anhui Province has 73 important waterbird habitats, mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River floodplain. Gap analysis showed that 42 of these suffered from protection gaps, accounting for 57.53% of the total area. The importance of waterbird habitats was significantly correlated with elevation, normalized vegetation index, lake area, and lake circumference but not with distance from roads or population density. This study presents scientific information for waterbird habitat conservation in Anhui Province and provides reference cases for waterbird habitat conservation and maintaining wetland ecosystem functions.Abstract Wetlands are among the most important habitats of highly wetland-dependent waterbirds but are subject to ongoing habitat loss and degradation owing to intensified anthropogenic activities. The scarcity of human and natural resources makes effective habitat protection an important concern. Here, we aimed to investigate waterbird habitat protection methods for Anhui Province, China, a critical stopover and wintering area on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway that features rich wetland resources subject to significant habitat loss and degradation. We evaluated the status and importance of 306 wintering waterbird habitats and identified the key environmental influences and current protection gaps using the entropy weights method and generalized additive modeling. We found 73 important habitats for waterbirds in Anhui Province, which were classified into levels of importance (descending from I to V) according to the natural discontinuity method. Level I and Level II habitats were mainly located in the Yangtze River floodplain and Level IV habitats in the Huaihe River floodplain. The gap analysis showed that 42 important waterbird habitats had protection gaps, accounting for 57.53% of the total area. Waterbird habitat importance was significantly correlated with elevation, normalized vegetation index, lake area, and lake circumference but not with distance from roads or population density. The results of this study provide scientific information for waterbird habitat conservation planning, which is crucial for maintaining wetland ecosystem functions.