Construction of international important wetland White-headed crane ecological corridor in Chongming Dongtan, China

•The role of ecological corridors in the protection of rare waterbirds.•Optimization of ecological functional area based on ecological corridor.•The best distance threshold for the rare white-headed crane is 500 m.•Using circuit theory to find the best migration location for rare waterbirds.•Important habitat area of rare white-headed crane mainly in beach. At the Yangtze River estuary, the Chongming Dongtan International Important Wetland is a typical estuary wetland. It is an essential habitat for international migratory birds. The habitat of birds in this area changes rapidly. The ecological corridor is an important means to maintain the stability of the watershed ecosystem and enhance the ecological sustainability of the watershed. It has significant demonstration implications for the preservation of biodiversity and the restoration of ecological functions of wetlands with significant ecological value. In this study, the rare white-headed crane distributed in Chongming Dongtan was taken as the research object, and the land use change in Chongming Dongtan in recent ten years was obtained by ENVI and ArcGIS10.8 software. The ecological sources of the white-headed crane population were screened using morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and landscape connectivity. Using GIS technology to construct a comprehensive resistance surface, combined with circuit theory, the ecological processes in heterogeneous landscapes are simulated by calculating ' resistance ' or ' current ' to identify important ecological corridors, ecological pinch points, and ecological obstacles. The results showed that the region included 24 ecological sources, 46 ecological corridors, 127 ecological pinch points, and 134 Ecological obstacle points. The habitat in the study area showed a trend of fragmentation. The high-resistance areas of Chongming Dongtan were mainly distributed in low-altitude areas with rapid urbanization and frequent human activities, such as Qiyao Town and Yuxi Village. The ecological corridors of White-headed cranes are mainly distributed in bare flat, reed beaches, grassland, and paddy fields. The optimal threshold of MSPA landscape in the study area is 500 m. At the same time, the ecological function area is optimized and divided into different levels, such as ecological core area, ecological buffer zone, ecological crisscross area, production and living area. This study constructs the ecological corridor of the White-headed crane in Chongming Dongtan