Wetland mitigation and its ecological consequences for endangered waterbirds in the Liaohe River Delta wetlands, China

The Liaohe River Delta wetlands contain over 800 km² of the world´s most important and unique natural wetlands, which support a wide range of important biological diversity and act as crucial staging and breeding areas for migratory bird populations. In the past two decades, however, these wetlands and the biodiversity they support have been under constant threat of degradation, mostly due to human development pressures. To try to find a compromise between the conflicting potential uses - land use by humans vs. nature conservation - we explored spatial planning of wetland mitigation in the Liaohe Delta, including its landuse targets, ecological objectives, spatial strategies, and management types. By using a GIS-based expert model (LEDESS), the measures to realize the landscape targets were identified, the spatial areas involved in these measures were located, and ecological impacts on habitat suitability and carrying capacities of the indicator species (i.e., red-crowned crane and Saunder´s gull) were modelled. Our results indicated that a spatial solution might exist that could mitigate the competing landuse needs between the ecological conservation and human needs, and to maintain the “no-net-loss” of wetland habitats.