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Impact of a dam on wintering waterbirds’ habitat use

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

QING ZENG Open the ORCID record for QING ZENG [Opens in a new window] ,
CAI LU ,
GANG LI ,
ZHI-BIAO GUO ,
LI WEN  and
GUANG-CHUN LEI
QING ZENG
Affiliation:
School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University. Beijing 100083, China
CAI LU
Affiliation:
School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University. Beijing 100083, China
GANG LI
Affiliation:
School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University. Beijing 100083, China
ZHI-BIAO GUO
Affiliation:
Taoyuan County Forestry Bureau, Hunan 415700, China
LI WEN
Affiliation:
Science Division, Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia
GUANG-CHUN LEI*
Affiliation:
School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University. Beijing 100083, China
*
*Correspondence: Guang-Chun Lei email: [email protected]
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Summary

The degradation, alteration and depletion of riparian habitats caused by river regulation are among critical conservation concerns. Aquatic and riparian habitats support not only river-dwelling biota such as macroinvertebrates and fish, but also waterbirds, the top predators in the aquatic food web. Despite the intimate relationships between fish and waterbirds, the two groups are often investigated separately. Using an integrative approach, we examined the effects of dams on fish and scaly-sided merganser (Mergus squamatus), an endangered, iconic riverine species, where the lack of knowledge about habitat preferences greatly hampers long-term conservation efforts. Our analysis quantified three causal links: (1) water depth had direct, comparable, negative effects on both fish and waterbirds, and the path coefficients for fish and birds are –0.31 and –0.46, respectively; (2) river landscape heterogeneity directly and positively affected fish and waterbirds, and the path coefficients for fish and birds are 0.63 and 0.19, respectively; and (3) depth and river landscape also exerted indirect effects on waterbirds through their impacts on fish abundance, and the path coefficients for fish and birds are –0.15 and 0.28, respectively. Our findings could contribute to the rational spatial planning and sustainable operation of dams in that maintaining instream habitat availability and heterogeneity would benefit the whole riverine ecosystem.

Keywords

damriver ecosystemwaterbirdhabitatscaly-sided merganser
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 307 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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