Exploring Spatial Relationship between Restoration Suitability and Rivers for Sustainable Wetland Utilization

Wetlands are important ecosystems for biodiversity preservation and environmental regulation. However, the integrity of wetland ecosystems has been seriously compromised and damaged due to the reckless and indiscriminate exploitation of wetland resources during economic development by human society. Hence, wetland restoration has now attracted wide attention. Understanding wetland restoration suitability and its relationship with river grade and river distance is an important step in further implementing wetland restoration and ensuring an orderly wetland development and utilization. In this study, wetland restoration suitability is evaluated combining natural and human factors. Taking its result as an important basis, the spatial distribution characteristics of different levels of wetland restoration suitability are discussed for the studied region; the percentage distribution of different levels of wetland restoration suitability is analyzed for 10 km long buffer zones of rivers of different grades, and the association between the distribution of different levels of wetland restoration suitability and the river distance (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 km) is also analyzed for different buffer zones of rivers in different grades. Our findings show that the spatial distribution of wetland restoration suitability is closely associated with the grade of rivers and the distance of the wetland patches from the river. The higher the river grade, the higher the percentage of the wetland with high restoration suitability within the same river distance. The percentage of wetlands with high restoration suitability has shown a notably decreasing trend as the river distance increases for the areas beside rivers of all grades, while the percentage of a wetland area with relatively high restoration suitability tends to increase as the river distance increases for the areas beside rivers of grade I and II and does not have a noticeable trend to change as the river distance changes for the area beside rivers of other grades. Results of this can provide technical support for wetland restoration suitability evaluation for plain areas, a spatial reference for wetland restoration prioritizing, and an orderly wetland development and utilization in future studies and planning.