Spatial and Temporal Variations of Habitat Quality and Its Response of Landscape Dynamic in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China

Habitat quality is an important indicator for assessing biodiversity and is critical to ecosystem processes. With urban development and construction in developing countries, habitat quality is increasingly influenced by landscape pattern changes. This has made habitat conservation to be an increasingly urgent issue. Despite the growing interest in this issue, studies that reveal the role of land use change in habitat degradation at multiple scales are still lacking. Therefore, we analyzed the spatial and temporal variations of habitat quality of the Three Gorges Reservoir area by the InVEST habitat quality model and demonstrated the responses of habitat quality to various landscape dynamics by correspondence analysis. The result showed that the habitat quality score of this area increased from 0.685 in 2000 to 0.739 in 2015 and presented a significant spatial heterogeneity. Habitat quality was significantly higher in the northeastern and southwestern parts of the reservoir area than in other regions. Meanwhile, habitat quality improved with altitude and slope, and increased for all altitude and slope zones. The habitat quality of >1000 m and >25° zone exceeds 0.8, while the habitat quality of