Article Ecology April 2012 Vol.57 No.10: 11161134 doi: 10.1007/s11434-011-4942-9 Protection efficacy of national wetland reserves in China ZHENG YaoMin1, ZHANG HaiYing1, NIU ZhenGuo1* & GONG Peng1,2,3* 1 State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Jointly Sponsored by Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100101, China; 2 Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsing- hua University, Beijing 100084, China; 3 Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3114, USA Received August 10, 2011; accepted November 28, 2011 Wetlands have the most abundant biodiversity, the highest carbon sequestration capacity, and the highest values for ecological services per unit area, of all the world’s ecosystems. Practice has shown that establishing reserves is the most effective way of protecting typical ecosystems and their biodiversity, and saving rare or endangered wildlife. The Chinese government’s policy is to protect wetland systems by establishing reserves that encompass a massive network of wetlands, including wetland nature re- serves, internationally important wetlands, and wetland parks. Many are already established. The effect of protecting wetland nature reserves at the national level has not yet been reported. We used the latest database evaluating the protection value of wet- land reserves, and remotely sensed wetland maps (1978–2008), developed by the same mapping specialists and based on the same classification system, and related environmental data, to evaluate the effects of protecting China’s national wetland reserves over the last 30 years. We conclude that (i) the total area of wetland in the national wetland reserves has decreased over the last 30 years to 8152.47 km2, and just 8% of China’s net decrease in wetlands; (ii) about 79% of the 91 national wetland reserves are in a poor condition. These are generally located around the Yangtze River, Eastern Coast, the Three Rivers Source, and Southwest China. Protection measures should be undertaken urgently in these areas. Only 15% of national wetland reserves are under sound protection, and these are generally located in the upper reaches of the Songhua River; (iii) although 88% of national wetland re- serves are primitive (relatively natural), implying that the site selection has been scientific, a high percentage of national wetland reserves show early warning signs of decline and require urgent attention; (iv) based on our evaluation of protection effects and pressures on ecology, we have made a priority list of national wetland reserves, and propose several protection strategies. remote sensing, wetlands, protection, ecology, early warning signs Citation: Zheng Y M, Zhang H Y, Niu Z G, et al. Protection efficacy of national wetland reserves in China. Chin Sci Bull, 2012, 57: 11161134, doi: 10.1007/s11434-011-4942-9 Wetlands have the highest ecological value per unit area on change [8]. earth [1], the strongest carbon sequestration capability [2], Through over 140 years of practice, the establishment of and the greatest biodiversity protection significance [3–7]. nature reserves has been shown to be the best method of Protecting wetlands and their biodiversity has attracted sig- protecting biodiversity, and an effective measure for main- nificant attention from the international community (http:// taining the ecological security of a region [9]. Prior to 2008, www.wetlands.org, 2010). However, the effectiveness of there were 1.2×105 protected areas around the world, occu- wetland protection has rarely been considered. There is a pying about 2.1×107 km2 in total area (http://www.unep- great need for quantitative assessment of wetland ecosys- wcmc.org/wdpa/statistics, 2010), and accounting for 14% of tems to aid understanding of likely global environmental the world’s total land area. There has been no agreement on the classification of the *Corresponding authors (email: [email protected]; [email protected]) world’s protected areas. After several rounds of discussion © The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com csb.scichina.com www.springer.com/scp Zheng Y M, et al. Chin Sci Bull April (2012) Vol.57 No.10 1117 and revision by the International Union for Conservation of wetland reserves, and suggested a ranked list of national and Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) in 1969, 1972, 1978 provincial wetland reserves based on 16 categories of wet- and 1994, protected areas have been divided into 6 types, land reserves across China, depending on their protection including Strict Nature Reserve (Ia), Wilderness Area (Ib), value. National Park (II), Natural Monument or Feature (III), Habi- Gong et al. [9] revised the wetland classification system tat Species management Area (IV), Protected Landscape/sea- suggested by Niu et al. [21] and completed wetland maps of scape (V) and Protected Area with sustainable use of natural China for the past 30 years based on remotely sensed data resources (VI) (http://www.iucn.org, 2010). [22]. These wetland-related data have laid the foundations Studies on nature reserve classification were carried out for assessment of the effectiveness of wetland protection at in China during the 20th century [10]. In 1993, the “Chinese the national level. Nature Reserves Classification and Ranking Principle” was We analyzed changes in wetland reserves and assessed published jointly by the former State Environmental Protec- the effects of protection and human pressure over the last 30 tion Agency and the State Administration of Technological years, mainly by using wetland maps, national wetland re- Supervision, and this was accepted as a national standard serve boundary data, protection value data, and related data. (GB/T 14529-93) [11]. By consideration of the main protec- tion roles, this document divided Chinese nature reserves into 3 categories and 9 types: the natural ecosystem class 1 Methods (forest, prairie and meadow, wilderness, interior wetland, 1.1 Data sources and preparation and marine/coast), the wildlife class (wild animals and wild plants), and the natural vestige class (geological vestige and 1.1.1 Chinese wetland maps based on satellite data extinct organism vestige). Prior to 2011, China had estab- The Chinese wetland maps were developed primarily by lished 614 wetland reserves [12,13], and 91 of these are manual interpretation [8,21], in which the narrowest river national wetland reserves. width was 90 m and the area of the minimum mapping unit A wetland protection network has been established. This was about 9×104 m2. Four different maps at 20 m (2008), 30 m is made up of mostly wetland reserves, along with interna- (2000, 1990), and 80 m (1978) resolutions were resampled tional important wetlands, wetland parks, special marine into maps with the same cell size (240 m×240 m) for com- reserves, small wetland reserves and wetland multipurpose parative purposes. reserves. However, no report has evaluated the effects of wetland protection, or assessed the spatial distribution of 1.1.2 Database of wetland reserves China’s wetland reserves. Data for 182 wetland reserves were collected [23–26], the Assessment of protection value refers to research into database for protection value evaluation of wetland reserves natural resources and the importance of nature reserves, was established and distribution maps of wetland reserves including the relative diversity, rarity, representativeness, were created. The websites of the nature reserve authorities suitability, naturalness, and human disturbance of reserves were used for checking data and updating it in real time. For [13,14]. Protection effect evaluation is comprehensive research details see Zheng [13]. into the levels of protection of national wetland reserves The distribution maps of wetland reserves were scanned, from the perspective of protection value, dynamic change, adjusted, and quantified based on the general plan of wet- the expansion of species, and the functional zoning suggested land reserves. Basic information about the reserves from sci- by conservation biology, ecology, and nature reserve science. entific reports was input into an Excel spreadsheet and then There has been no appropriate definition of ecological loaded into a special database. Data from the “1:4000000 security [15]. Some believe that ecological security is as Chinese wetland distribution map” (State Forest Admin- important as national and economic security (http://www. istration, 2003), the “1:4000000 Chinese river system dis- cctv.com/news/ocus/story/story0423.html, 2010). Ecological tribution map” (https://219.238.166.215/mcp/index.asp, 2011), security can be explained as comprising two aspects. First, “the Chinese map” (Map Publishing House, 2010), “the re- degeneration of the ecological environment poses a threat to mote sensing data of Beijing Smallsat”, and “the announce- sustainable economic development; and second, public dis- ment material on the website of the reserves authorities” were affection raised by environmental problems poses a threat to used as supplementary material for checking and analysis. social stability [15,16]. Combining remote sensing (RS) and geographic infor- 1.1.3 Database of ecological pressure mation system (GIS) has created a powerful analytical Charts of Chinese population density and land use were method for exploring the dynamics of wetlands and devel- downloaded from the Internet (http://www.igsnrr.ac.cn/xxgx/ oping an influential model for change [17–20]. There is 200909/t20090904_2464203.html, 2011) and Chinese road, currently no literature relating to the effects of protecting rail, and residential areas were taken from the China Na- wetlands at the national level because of the lack of data. tional 1:1000000 terrain database (State Administration of Zheng [13] completed maps of the boundaries of national Surveying, Mapping, and Geoinformation, 2002). 1118 Zheng Y M, et al. Chin Sci Bull April (2012) Vol.57 No.10 1.2 Research methods and data processing reserves has not been published.