Geographic Information System Of The Rare And Endangered Birds In Sichuan Province

Biodiversity is the base of human living, economic and social development, but distribution of biodiversity is uneven on the earth. According to the research of Myers, a majority of organisms occur in 25 hotspots on the earth, including Hengduanshan Mountain areas of China. West Sichuan just locates in this hotspot.There are 1,014 species of terrestrial vertebrates in Sichuan Province, accounting for 45% of all the country, while land area accounts for 5%. Among them, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles are, respectively, 615, 225, 90 and 84 species, and accounting for 52%, 48%, 40% and 22%.Species extinction is a natural phenomenon. However, with the increasing human population and aggravating economic activities, more and more species are in danger of extinction since industrial revolution of the 19th century. The data of rare and endangered animals and plants on biological attribution are most, but are lack of spatial data. Both biological and spatial data are sporadically in relevant papers and works. For the purpose of investigating the distribution of the rare and endangered birds, in this research, the diversity and distribution patterns of the rare and endangered bird species in Sichuan Province were analysed with ArcView3.2a software using a database of specimen collections and published references.According to China Red Data Book of Endangered Animals, there are 60 rare and endangered bird species in Sichuan Province, which belong to 49 genera, 19 families and 11 orders, accounting for 32.79% of those of our country (183 species).With Access2000 and ArcView3.2a software, this research analysed threaten category, protection grade, zoogeography, endemism and species richness of the rare and endangered bird species in Sichuan Province. The results are below.1. Among 60 the rare and endangered bird species, 2 species are extinctive in our country, 8 species are endangered, 20 species are rare, 24 species are vulnerable, and other 6 species are not evaluated.2. There are 48 species listed in the legal list of wild animals of priority protection in China among 60 the rare and endangered birds, 12 species belong to first-grade wildlife of China, accounting for 20%; 36 species are second-grade, accounting for 60%. And 2 species are in the legal list of wild animals of priority protection in Sichuan Province, other 10 species don't belong to these two lists.3. These 60 birds are mostly distributed in the oriental region, and 30 species (or 50%)included; 24 species (or 40%) belong to the species distributed in the palaearctic region; other 6 species are those distributed in both oriental and palaearctic region.4. 14 species in 60 rare and endangered birds are endemic of China, accounting for 23.33%, and 1 species is endemic of Sichuan.5. In view of 3 classification grade i.e. class, family, genera and species in different geomorphologic regions, the richness of northwest Sichuan plateau region are all the highest, which have 43 species, belonging to 36 genera, 15 families 11 classes; the last is south Sichuan basin mountainous region, there is 1 class 1 family 1 genera 1 species.In terms of administrative delimitation , three centers of distribution of the rare and endangered bird species in Sichuan Province were identified by overlapping distribution maps, i.e. "Ruoergai County", "Baoxing County" and '"Songpan County".