Effects of Wetland Protection and Influential Factors in Xianghai Nature Reserve
向海自然保护区湿地资源保护有效性及其影响因素分析

The Xianghai National Nature Reserve,located in the northwest of Jilin Province,is one of the most important protected areas in China.The wetland in Xianghai is not only the important resources but also one of the main breeding habitats for red-headed cranes in Northeast China.The environmental condition in the wetland for the protection of cranes is of highest significance.However, losses and degradation of wetlands have been evolving into serious environmental problems in the recent decades.However,currently the management for effective protection of the special habitat is not very clear.In this paper,with aid of RS and GIS,dynamic changing process of wetlands was studied by using land use data in 1954,1986 and 2004.To evaluate the effectiveness of the natural reserve,comparisons of dynamic degree of wetland were carried out within different periods and areas,such as before and after the construction of protected area,different function zones,inside and outside the protected area.Numbers of migrating cranes were illustrated to assess the change of habitat quality.The natural and human factors were analyzed to explain the degradation of wetland.The results show that from 1954 to 2004,wetland has experienced substantial losses,with a decrease area from 414.98 km~2 in 1954 to 269.9 km~2 in 2004,and after the construction of protected area the decrease speed was slightly slowed down from 0.79% to 0.73%.The effectiveness of wetland protection in core area was better than that in buffer and experimental areas because of the serious influences of human activities.Compared with two outside buffer areas,wetland in Xianghai had more obviously spatial-temporal changes.Furthermore,the number of waterbirds also fluctuated along with the reduction of wetlands and climate changes.The degeneration of climate conditions,growth of population,increase of farmland and the insufficiencies in construction and management of protected area are the main reasons of the weak effectiveness for the protection of wetland in Xianghai National Natural Reserve.Finally,this study provides some suggestions for wetland protection and recovery that may further improve the regional ecological environment.