Study On Habitat Selection And Habitat Assessment Of Picoides Major

Woodpecker,known as "doctor of forest", is natural enemy to wood borers. Based on intensive field investigation for the great spotted woodpecker(Picoides major)'s habitats procuring different landscapes i.e.:agroforestry in Urad Front Banner, Inner Mongolia and Gong'an County, Hubei province; mountain terrain in Tianmu mountain Zhejiang province and Taizi mountain Hubei province; and metropolitan region in Beijing, this research focused on how the great spotted woodpecker choose habitats and tried to propose an objective habitat adaptability assessment. Taking stand age, stand density, distance from road, distance from water resources and food abundance as criterion, this research empolied GIS to evaluat the great spotted woodpecker's habitat adaptability of Urad Front Banner, Lin'an and Beijing, and extrapolated this method to National scale. Conclusively, the results of the research are as followed:1 Referring to documents and taking forest types and terrain characters into consideration, this research divided the habitats of the great spotted woodpecker into three categories:agriculture afforestation belt, mountain terrain, and city area; and integrated the factors influencing woodpecker's habitats choosing into biological element, abiotic element and anthropogenic element.2 Applying PCA (principal component analysis) to data collected from three great spotted woodpecker habitats, we extracted 5 major factors:stand age, stand density, distance from road, distance from water resources and food abundance. Sharing the same factors, however, different habitats typed have different dominated ones. General speaking, the most influential factors are stand density, stand age and distance from water resources.3 According to five major factors, we carried out the assessment of habitat adaptability in regional scale, and set 5 classes:most suitable, suitable, not very suitable, sub-suitable and not suitable. The most suitable region in Urad Front Banner located in the western and southern part accounting for 25.13% area of the whole region, not very suitable region located in the eastern part accounting for 50.21% area of the whole region. The most suitable and suitable region in Lin'an are uniformly distributed accounting for 20.74%,29.26% respectively. In Beijing, most suitable and suitable region are located in the northern and southwestern parts, especially, the not suitable region aggregated in the middle parts characterized by high population, for 50.60%,13.20% area of the whole region. 4 Up scaling the 5 regional habitat adaptability to the nation, we proposed three integrated habitat adaptability classes:suitable, sub-suitable, and not-suitable. The most suitable areas of the great spotted woodpeckers concentrated in Middle China, Eastern China and Southern China which procure high forest coverage and for 38.36% area of the whole nation; sub-suitable areas distributed in Eastern Qinghai, middle Heilongjiang and Eastern Gansu for 28.91% area of the whole nation; and not-suitable areas mainly located in Tibet, Taiwan, Northern Inner mongolia and Xinjiang for 32.73% area of the whole nation.