Impacts of Urbanization on The Wetland Waterbird Communities in Hangzhou

The distribution and abundance of waterbirds on 6 kinds of wetlands in Hangzhou were surveyed between December in 1997 and November in 1998.Eleven habitat characteristics were selected to determine the factors influencing wetland waterbird communities,and urbanization synthetical index so as to explore the impacts of urbanization on the waterbird communities.Other than food,water pollution and water depth,the habitat characteristics of landscape level (wetland shape,percent of surrounding building,wetland connectivity,distance to city center) and disturbance (noise and human disturbance) also showed strong relationships with species distributions,densities or diversities.Diversity of food and human disturbance played the significant roles in determining the variety of waterbird species diversity all year round.Species density and diversity decreased with increasing urbanization.Although some species showed a little adaptation to urbanization,there was no real adapted species.