Remote sensing measure of severity on the Zhalong wetlands and consequent ecological effects

Wildfire severity is widely used for measuring the effects of wildfire interference on the environment and ecosystems. Taken Zhalong national natural reserve(NNR) as a case study, through the application of an index called differenced Normalized Burn Ratio(dNBR) to measure wildfire severity and other RS and GIS spatial analysis tools, the relationships between the wildfire severity and potential environmental factors were studied, the effects of wildfire severity on the habitats of red-crowned cranes and the responses of red-crowned cranes to the wildfire disturbance were also discussed. The following conclusions are achieved: the wildfire severity varied in different functional zones, while the wildfire severity of the core area was the highest among all the zones; that of the buffer zone was the secondary, and the test zone and the ecologically planning zone the lowest. The core zone, which is low-lying and the scope of the altitude is between 148 m and 154 m and the vegetation is dominantly reeds, tends to burn. The responses of the red crane population in the study area were to flee away and colonize new habitats. But the new colonized habitats showed the tendency of being close to the burned areas rather than far away from them. The study provides references for the conservation of the study area.