The Impacts Of Constructing Three Gorges Dam To The Animals In Three Gorges Rivervoir

The world's largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam (TGD), has been inserted in the middle of Yangtze River in south-central China, and the water table had increased by 66 metes since the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) started storing water in late 2003. The construction of TGD had significantly changed the eco-environment of TGR both in terrestrial and in aquatic conditions. What and how these changes would impact the wildlife (include terrestrial wild animals and aquatic animals) lived in this region is urgent problems to be solved immediately.The terrestrial environmental condition became more fragmented, and"New"islands or seasonal islands had been formed in the TGR areas. In order to learn the impacts of building TGD to the wild animals in the future, we investigated the compositions, densities and distributions of rodent populations in field from May to October in 2004: one is Luoqi island and its thither counterpart (mainland), the other is Huanghua island and its thither counterpart (mainland). The results indicated that the rodent species were differed largely between two study sites, but there were no difference in rodent species between islands and their thither counterpart. The densities of rodents on islands were higher than that of on mainland. The higher rodent densities on islands may be that the sharp increase of water table and the separation from mainland had gathered the rodents to a relative narrow region.We also determined the tissueδ13C andδ15N values (blood, muscle and hair) of the dominant rodent species (Anourosorex squamipes, Volemys millicens, and Rattus flavipectus in Luoqi; Rattus norvegicus, Volemys millicens, and Rattus edwardsi in Huanghua) and their potential food sources, and partitioned the dietary compositions with stable isotope mixing models. Our study indicated that the diets of rodents...