The Influential Factors of the Habitat Quality of the Red-crowned Crane: A Case Study of Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

In order to effectively protect the habitat of cranes, this study constructs an indicator evaluation system based on the ecology–economy–society complex system and adopts the comprehensive “entropy weight method and analytic hierarchy process” evaluation model and coupled coordination model to scientifically measure the degree of coordinated development of the EES system in Yancheng. Further, a negative binomial regression model based on LASSO was used to analyze the key factors affecting the habitat quality of red-crowned cranes, and a support vector regression model was used to predict the population size of the cranes. The results show that the degree of the coordinated development of the EES system exhibited a fluctuating upward phenomenon, and the population size of the cranes also had a similar evolutionary trend, which indicates that the interaction between the two was significant and that the degree of the coordinated development of the system had a positive impact on the quality of the habitat of the cranes. Three types of ecological indicators (normalized difference vegetation index, annual precipitation, and soil erosion area) and three types of social indicators (natural growth rate, rural Engel coefficient, and public library collection) are the key factors affecting the population size of the cranes. The prediction results of the support vector regression model showed that the population of the cranes showed a fluctuating upward trend during the prediction interval, with a maximum of 952 cranes and an overall growth rate of 69.70%. The population size of the cranes is related to human social activities and the surrounding ecological environment, and the main reason for the decline in the population size of the cranes is the destruction of the local vegetation cover by the rapidly growing population and frequent human activities. Therefore, to improve the habitat quality of the cranes, local government departments need to strengthen the publicity of wildlife conservation, reduce agricultural land reclamation and pesticide pollution, and promote the coordinated development of the EES system in the Yancheng area.

Keywords

• red-crowned crane
• EES
• entropy weight method
• analytic hierarchy process
• coupling coordination degree
• RS-SVR