Abstract Human activity surrounding the Laurentian Great Lakes basin has significantly degraded coastal wetland habitats, resulting in severe marsh bird population declines and reduced coastal resilience to changing environmental conditions. Given the need to conserve remaining coastal wetlands for wildlife and people, we developed a spatial prioritization to identify the most important U.S. Great Lakes coastal wetlands for 14 marsh bird species. We modeled occurrence and relative abundance of each species using boosted regression trees, a machine learning algorithm, to relate standardized monitoring data to ten remotely-sensed environmental covariates. We then used Zonation conservation planning software to rank every wetland cell based on its importance for the suite of marsh bird species. Evaluation of the drivers of marsh bird occurrence and abundance revealed that open water, herbaceous wetland, latitude, longitude, and impervious surface were the most important predictors across focal species. The high-priority wetlands for marsh birds (defined as grid cells ranked in the top 20%) occurred along the shores of eastern Lake Ontario, western Lake Erie/St. Clair, Saginaw Bay, Green Bay, northern lakes Michigan and Huron, and western Lake Superior. Overall, less than half (42%) of high-priority coastal wetlands across the Great Lakes basin are currently under some level of protection, with Lake Ontario priority wetlands being the least protected (25%). Our findings represent an opportunity to improve coastal wetland conservation in a region where wetland loss and degradation continue to threaten marsh bird populations and the integrity of one of the world's largest freshwater ecosystems.

中文翻译：

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优先考虑沿海湿地以保护美国五大湖的沼泽鸟类

摘要 Laurentian Great Lakes 盆地周围的人类活动显着降低了沿海湿地栖息地，导致沼泽鸟类数量严重下降，并降低了沿海对不断变化的环境条件的适应能力。鉴于需要为野生动物和人类保护剩余的沿海湿地，我们制定了空间优先顺序，以确定美国五大湖区最重要的 14 种沼泽鸟类沿海湿地。我们使用增强回归树（一种机器学习算法）对每个物种的发生率和相对丰度进行建模，以将标准化监测数据与十个遥感环境协变量相关联。然后，我们使用 Zonation 保护规划软件根据每个湿地单元对沼泽鸟类物种的重要性对其进行排名。对沼泽鸟类发生和丰度的驱动因素的评估表明，开阔水域、草本湿地、纬度、经度和不透水表面是整个重点物种最重要的预测因素。沼泽鸟类的高优先级湿地（定义为排名前 20% 的网格单元）位于安大略湖东部、伊利湖/圣路易斯西部沿岸。克莱尔、萨吉诺湾、格林湾、密歇根湖和休伦湖北部以及苏必利尔湖西部。总体而言，五大湖流域中只有不到一半 (42%) 的高优先级沿海湿地目前处于某种程度的保护之下，安大略湖优先级湿地的保护程度最低 (25%)。