Spatial Structure Analysis of International Wetland of Deltas of Rud-e-Shur, Rud-e-Shirin and Rud-e-Minab in terms of Water Birds Richness

The Study of changes in species diversity and abundance of wetland bird populations, as the most important and most vulnerable environmental resources of the world, is a suitable biological agent to explain the quality and health trend of these ecosystems. The objective of this research was determining the areas in the deltas of Rud- e- Shur, Rud- e- Shirin and Rud- e- Minab International Wetland, which have diversity and richness of waterbirds; by using echelon software based on the spatial structure analysis. For this purpose, In January 2013 and 2014, three observers identified and recorded the location of birds with a GPS device, and for counting and determining the population size of birds used Swarovski and Zeiss binoculars (20x60 zoom eyepiece) and a counter was used to count large populations easily.
Then the area was divided into cells with areas of 9 and 36 km2 and for each cell the number of observed species was recorded. The calculation of richness was done based on species, genus and family to consider phylogenetic preferences in the area richness too. In this study the total number of migratory birds was recorded 36741 individuals, include 80 species, 45 genera and 23 families. Based on the net which had 9 km2 cells, 12 cells with an area of 10800 ha and 46 cells with an area of 41400 ha were defined as safe zone and second zone, respectively; and providing the net had cells with an area of 36 km2, 7 cells equivalent of 25200 ha and 20 cells equivalent of 72000 ha identified as safe zone and second zone, respectively. The comparison between two methods showed that the nets which had cells with smaller area, had higher accuracy in separation of high species richness of areas; while the nets which had cells with bigger area, provided an appropriate general view of areas for us.