Habitat quality for many wildlife populations has a spatial component related to the arrangement of habitat elements across large geographic areas. With remote sensing and GIS technology, this paper presents an approach to calculate Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) for Giant Pandas to evaluate the habitat quality. In this paper, a buffer of a given distance (30 km or more) to the Giant Panda distribution area estimated in three national surveys (1974, 1989 and 2002), which is located in Sichuan, Gansu and Shanxi provinces in western China, was used as the study area. In order to study different species group’s habitat quality, the study area is divided into five parts: the Qinling mountain systems, located in the southeast in Shanxi province, the Minshan mountain systems, located in the south in Gansu province and northwest in Sichuan province, the Qionglai mountain systems, the Xiangling mountain systems and the Liangshan mountain systems, located in the west of Sichuan province, conforming to the five big Giant Panda species groups. Three physical environmental factors (elevation, slope and aspect), one ecological factor (vegetation distribution) and several human-influence factors (distances to highways, general roads, inhabitants and rural areas) are selected as the influence factors to calculate HSI. Each factor was reclassified by grid-cell (30 × 30 m per cell) to the suitability index scale from 0 to 1 based on habitat affinities before final calculation. After analyzing the HSI values on the most Giant Panda distribution area, 0.0144 was considered as the threshold habitat quality. Then, HSI was calculated for five mountain systems for three periods conforming to three national surveys (1974, 1989 and 2002). Several benefits to the approach can be highlighted. Firstly, HSI can be used as the standard to evaluate the quality of Giant Panda habitat. Secondly, by using HSI maps from 1974, 1989 and 2002, we can see that the Giant Panda habitat was the largest in 1974, and was then reduced much before 1989. However, by 2002, it had recovered to some extent, which conforms to the habitat data from the three national surveys. Thirdly, the habitat changes in the five mountain systems examined in the study are different. Finally, nature reserves play an important role in the protection of Giant Panda habitat; there are more suitable habitats in nature reserves than non-protected areas.
Wśród organizmów bytujących w środowisku gruntowo-wodnym, bardzo wrażliwą na zmiany jakości wody grupę zwierząt stanowią płazy. Te ważne bioindykatory środowiska gruntowo-wodnego należą do kręgowców najbardziej zagrożonych wyginięciem. W związku z tym podjęto próbę oceny stanu populacji płazów na wybranym obszarze użytkowanym rolniczo, analizując jakość wód powierzchniowych w zbiornikach będących ich siedliskami, a także wód gruntowych z sąsiednich terenów rolnych. Biomonitoring jakości środowiska gruntowo-wodnego obejmował dwa siedliska płazów na obszarach gminy Stare Czarnowo (woj. zachodniopomorskie, Polska). Przeprowadzone analizy składu wód powierzchniowych i wód gruntowych wykazały dobry stan jakości siedlisk płazów, co potwierdziło liczne występowanie tych zwierząt. W obu siedliskach dominowały żaby zielone (P. lessonae/P. esculentus) i żaby brunatne (R. arvalis). Współczynnik podobieństwa Jaccarda wykazał zróżnicowanie badanych siedlisk, a ocena wskaźnika dogodności siedliska (HSI) dowiodła, że tylko jedno siedlisko stwarzało odpowiednie warunki do bytowania płazów. Wykazano, że nie tylko jakość wód miała znaczenie w doborze siedliska płazów, ale również inne elementy środowiskowe. Powinno to skłaniać do prowadzenia stałego biomonitoringu płazów w Polsce, ponieważ wiedza na temat ich rozmieszczenia nie jest wystarczająca.
EN
Amphibians as a group are very sensitive to water quality changes among organisms inhabiting soil-water environment. Those important bioindicators of soil-water environmemt are among the most endangered vertebrates. Therefore, an attempt was made to assess amphibian population status in the selected agricultural area. It was performed by analyzing surface water quality in the amphibian pond habitats as well as groundwater from the neighboring agricultural land. Biomonitoring of the soil-water environment quality included two selected amphibian habitats in the area of Gmina Stare Czarnowo (West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland). Content analyses of the surface and groundwaters demon-strated a good quality of amphibian habitats, confirmed by numerous amphibian occurrence. Both habitats wered dominated by green frogs (P. lessonae/P. esculentus) and brown frogs (R. arvalis). Jaccard similarity coefficient showed diversity of habitats investigated and Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) proved that only S1 was an appropriate habitat for amphibians. It was demonstrated that not only played water quality a role in amphibian habitat selection, but other environmental factors were important as well. Constant biomonitoring of amphibians in Poland would be recommended as knowledge about their distribution is still not adequate.
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