Akademik Məlumat İdarəetmə Sistemi
Ecological Indicators, vol.177, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
Coastal wetland restoration from agricultural land conversion represents a critical strategy for addressing frequent disasters, natural habitat loss, and biodiversity decline associated with wetland area reduction. The Jianghan Plain (JHP) constitutes a highly economically developed floodplain region in China where comprehensive wetland restoration strategies and implementation frameworks remain insufficient despite urgent conservation needs. This research developed an innovative methodology integrating remote sensing indicators with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis to identify agricultural areas suitable for coastal wetland restoration with differentiated priority levels. The framework incorporates six key indicators: agricultural productivity (classified using Net Primary Productivity thresholds of <400, 400–800, and >800 gC/m2/year), water occurrence frequency, soil moisture conditions, landform characteristics, anthropogenic features, and water network integration within 1000-meter proximity to existing water bodies. AHP weight determination yielded floodplain boundaries (0.35), soil moisture (0.20), water network integration (0.18), crop productivity (0.12), landform characteristics (0.10), and anthropogenic features (0.05) with acceptable consistency ratio (CR = 0.039). Results demonstrate that 234.60 km2 of agricultural land (0.79 % of total agricultural area) presents suitable conditions for coastal wetland restoration across JHP, with 56.68 km2 designated as high-priority areas concentrated in eastern regions near major waterways. Lichuan, Jianli, and Liuqiao counties exhibit the highest restoration potential, while Jianli, Liuhe, and Wuxue counties contain the most critical high-priority restoration areas. Validation analysis reveals that 82.8 % of identified restoration sites are located within 100 m of agricultural areas flooded during the severe 2021 summer flood event, confirming model effectiveness in identifying flood-vulnerable agricultural lands. Climate projections indicate increasing temperature (1.8–2.7 °C) and precipitation (12.3–18.7 %) by 2050 under different scenarios, heightening the necessity for coastal wetland restoration to enhance ecosystem services and flood mitigation capacity. This research provides scientific guidance for wetland restoration policy development, land use planning optimization, and climate adaptation strategies while establishing a transferable framework applicable to similar floodplain regions globally through threshold adjustment and local calibration procedures.