[Effects of landscape heterogeneity on the availability of amphibians' habitats in agricultural region on the lower reaches of the Yellow River, China.].

SelectingFengqiu County in Henan Province, a typical region of the lower Yellow River, as the study area, adopting the analysis method of graph theory, with the support of geographic information systems (GIS) and R software, we analyzed the effects of landscape composition and landscape configuration, the mean pond size (MS), the number of ponds (NP), and distance to the nearest roads (DR), on habitat availability of amphibian species under different levels of dispersal ability (250, 500, 1000 and 2000 m), by referring the probability index of connectivity (PC) and the important value of patches (percentage of the variation in PC, dPC) to the degree of availability of ponds for amphibians' breeding. The results indicated that the ponds availability for amphibians' breeding was closely related to MS, NP, and DR. Therein, MS and NP were the key factors determining the availability of ponds under the dispersal ability of 250 m, and then MS and DR were the most significant influencing factors on pond availability under the dispersal ability of 500 m.

[Multi-scale effects of landscape heterogeneity on pollinators' diversity in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River: A case study in Gongyi, Henan, China.].

Eco-services provided by non-agricultural organisms are the basis of ecosystem to keep its stability in agricultural landscapes. With the strengthening of agricultural intensification, the ongoing loss of biodiversity is one of the most extrusive issues in the development of modern agriculture. In this paper, the study area was set up in Gongyi County, a typical agricultural region in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.

[Spatial variation in riparian soil properties and its response to environmental factors in typical reach of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River].

Soil and vegetation are the foundation of maintaining riparian ecosystem services, and their spatial distribution and variations can determine the effects of ecological functions. In the present study, selecting the typical reach of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River as the study area, the spatial distributions of riparian soil physicochemical properties and their response to environmental factors were analyzed by employing methods of field investigation, experimental analysis, and redundancy analysis (RDA). The results showed that soil particle was composed significantly of silt in the study area, with the increase of riparian buffer distance, soil bulk density increased initially and then decreased, whereas soil moisture showed the opposite pattern.