Improving the quantification of waterfowl migration with remote sensing and bird tracking

Accurately quantifying waterfowl migration patterns is pertinent to monitor ecosystem health and control bird-borne infectious diseases. In this review, we summarize the current understanding of the environmental mechanisms that drive waterfowl migration and then investigate the effect of intra- and inter-annual change in food supply and temperature(e.g., climate change) on their migration patterns. Recent advances in remote sensing and animal tracking techniques make it possible to monitor these environmental factors over a wide range of scales and record bird movements in detail. The synergy of these techniques will facilitate substantial progress in our understanding of the environmental drivers of bird migration. We identify prospects for future studies to test existing hypotheses and develop models integrating up-todate knowledge, high-resolution remote sensing data and high-accuracy bird tracking data. This will allow us to predict when waterfowl will be where, in response to shortand long-term global environmental change.

Local temperature and El Niño Southern Oscillation influence migration phenology of East Asian migratory waterbirds wintering in Poyang,China

Temperature is a critical factor influencing avian phenology,due to its direct impact on food and water availability.Most previous studies have focused on the timing of spring migration and the arrival of birds at breeding grounds along the European and American flyways;little is known about migration ecology at the wintering sites along the Asian flyways.Using linear regression models,this study investigates how local temperature variation and EI Niño Southern Oscillation(ENSO)influences the arrival and departure timing of 9 waterbird species breeding in Mongolia or Siberia and overwintering in Poyang,China from 2002 to 2013.Birds mainly arrive at Poyang in October and depart for their breeding sites in March.Out of the 9 species,6 show a strong negative relationship between departure time and overwintering temperature in Poyang.Departure dates also show a negative association with overwintering ENSO and March ENSO for two species.Both local and large-scale climate indices show no influence on the arrival timing of waterbirds.We suggest that birds react to the annual variation of overwintering temperature:an earlier departure of waterbirds is facilitated by a warmer overwintering period and vice versa.The long-term accumulated temperature effect is more pronounced than ENSO and the short-term local temperature effect.Our findings could help quantify the potential impact of global warming on waterbirds.

Projected impacts of climate change on protected birds and nature reserves in China

Knowledge about climate change impacts on species distribution at national scale is critical to biodiversity conservation and design of management programs.Although China is a biodiversity hot spot in the world,potential influence of climate change on Chinese protected birds is rarely studied. Here, we assess the impact of climate change on 108 protected bird species and nature reserves using species distribution modeling at a relatively fine spatial resolution(1 km) for the first time. We found that a large proportion of protected species would have potential suitable habitat shrink and northward range shift by 77–90 km in response to projected future climate change in 2080. Southeastern China would suffer from losing climate suitability, whereas the climate conditions in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and northeastern China were projected to become suitable for more protected species. Onaverage, each protected area in China would experience a decline of suitable climate for 3–4 species by 2080. Climate change will modify which species each protected area will be suitable for. Our results showed that the risk of extinction for Chinese protected birds would be high, even in the moderate climate change scenario. These findings indicate that the management and design of nature reserves in China must take climate change into consideration.

中国需要建设基于网络的迁徙鸟类监测和保护系统

The East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) is the most threatened flyway worldwide, encompassing the greatest number of threatened migratory bird species of all flyways on Earth [1]. This is largely attributed to pronounced human-bird conflicts in Asia,leading to elevated rates of habitat loss, degradation, and illegal hunting [2,3].