Impacts on Herons Habitats from the Landscape Changes in the Dragon Valley, Guangxi Province

By the economic integration in the Beibu Gulf, the Dragon Valley in Guangxi Province had to confront the huge sweeping construction, although it is adjacent to the Ardeidae Reserve. Be face to the significant upcoming landscape change, the influences to the Ardeidae and its habitat are still unclear. We simulated the current landscape pattern and predicted the landscape pattern after the construction by the development planning in the Nanxiao District of the Dragon Valley and analyzed the landscape pattern change and its influence to the Ardeidae habitat by using landscape ecological methodology and the 3S technology. The result showed that the landscape fragmentation and pattern heterogeneity would rise; the dominant landscape would have turned from timber forest to construction land and urban green land; the open water area would be the major foraging site of the Ardeidae after construction, but for the increasing of the human interference and the adjacent roads, the open water would lost its ecological service function. The landscape pattern analysis can be an efficient methodology for understanding the ecological processes and it should play more important role in the preliminary work of urban planning. The study would give theoretical support to the bird habitat protection in the planning.