Habitat Suitability Evaluation Of Giant Panda Based On Remote Sensing Inversion Of Forest Structure

The giant pandas is an rare and unique species to China, and they have particular lifestyle distributed only under certain environmental forest structure, so forest composition and forest structure change, and forest ecosystem function change could affect the survival of giant pandas. But there a few researches consider forest structure about the giant pandas habitat factors, thus, analyzed the forest structure as an important factor for giant panda habitat.Therefore, this paper take the Wolong Nature Reserve as the study area,analyzed giant panda habitat by satellite remote sensing images and field survey data.First, using TM date inverse forest leaf area index, forest canopy openness, forest canopy closure, and vegetation coverage, acquire nature reserve change trend of forest spatial structure. At last, taking the giant panda trace point extract suitable habitat ecological factors(terrain factor, forest structure factor and the road disturbance factor)as the impact of giant panda habitat in Wolong Nature Reserve, then analysis the suitable for the giant panda habitat.(1) Analysis of forest structure change by remote sensing. Using TM date extract vegetation index, and use the SPSS software to establish a regressive model between vegetation index and the measured data(LAI, DIFN), In order to inverse forest structure. Result show that, during 2001-2014 in Wolong Nature Reserve, the area ratio were decreased 4.12% which LAI value greater than 4, the area ratio were reduced 5% which the forest canopy openness value greater than 0.2, the area ratio were increased 0.25% which the forest canopy density value greater than 0.9, and the area ratio were decreased 22.94% which the forest vegetation coverage value greater than 0.8.(2) Habitat suitability assessment. Extracting suitable habitat ecological factors(terrain factor, forest structure factor and the road disturbance factor) base the giant panda trace points corresponding the habitat conditions, then analyzed the suitable for the giant panda habitat. It shows that, during 2001-2014, the total areas of suitable habitat were decreased 53.09 km2, the best suitable habitats were reduced 3.28 km2 and secondary suitable habitats were decreased 49.81 km2. When we come in for the disturbance of road construction, the giant panda habitat had lost, the total areas ofsuitable habitat were decreased 49.22 km2, the best suitable habitat were reduced 2.59km2 and secondary suitable habitat were decreased 46.63 km2.(3) Suitable habitat landscape pattern analysis. Analyzed different time or different optimum conditions suitable for giant panda habitat landscape pattern patches by Patch Analysis. The results show that, during 2001-2014, under the natural factors(forest structure and the terrain factor conditions), the total areas of suitable habitat patches were reduced 1417.92 ha, the suitable habitat patches average area were decreased 0.31 ha, the patch size standard deviation were increased 0.51, mean shape index of patch area were increased 0.02. When we add a provincial highway through the reserve as human interference factors, we analysis the landscape pattern found that the total areas of suitable habitat patches were reduced 1065.29 ha, the suitable habitat patches average area were decreased 0.02 ha, the patch size standard deviation were increased 0.54, mean shape index of patch area were increased 0.02.