Analysis of the factors affecting the long-term distribution changes of wetlands in the Jing-Jin-Ji region, China

[Display omitted] •Quantified the effects on wetland distribution using structural equation model.•The infulence path of variables on wetland distribution is changing.•Human disturbance has become the major variable affecting wetland distribution. Wetlands are important to global ecosystems and are easily affected by changes in climate, soil properties, terrain, and human disturbances. To describe the effects quantitatively, structural equation modeling was applied to detect the impacts of these four latent variables on the distribution of wetlands in the Jing-Jin-Ji region in 1980, 1995, 2005, and 2015. The results of the models show that human disturbance and terrain conditions had negative effects on the distribution of wetlands, and their standard coefficients ranged from −0.084 to −0.011 and from −0.124 to −0.006, respectively. Climate and soil properties were beneficial for wetland distribution, and their standard coefficients ranged from 0.039 to 0.169 and from 0.015 to 0.290, respectively. The modeling results also indicate some differences in indirect influence among the four models, and 9 indirect pathways were detected in the four models. We also found that there was a significant negative correlation between the variation in the influencing factors and their impact on wetlands (p