On evaluating the selection of habitat restoration projects for the wintering common teals in the Huajiang wetland

Located at Taipei City Waterbird Refuge, Huajiang wetland attracts thousands of ducks, of which are dominant by common teals, to visit here from September to next April every year. In recent years, wetlands have been led to a significant terrestrial regime from water regime, resulting in a reduction of teals since their habitat preferences could be affected by the condition to be gradually deteriorated. According to current research, the creation of bare mudflats and open water area would attract green-winged teals. However, since this wetland is belonging to a deposition area, the effectiveness of sedimentation reduction programs presents as a major key issue. How to consider selecting habitat restoration program involves various focal points is another focus of this paper to be explored. This paper, therefore, has been developed four types of restoration programs, combined with expert questionnaire and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP). We calculated the scores in each programs, and detected expert questionnaire including five factors: project cost, sedimentation reduction effectiveness, engineering disturbance, habitat suitability, ornamental and environmental education. While assessing the effectiveness of each programs on reducing silts, we selected assessment methods by using of a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model to simulate the hydraulic conditions and to analyze the changes of shear stress. Experts questionnaire has been detected that the weights of “habitat suitability” to be calculated as a dominant factor (0.34), followed by the factors of “ornamental and environmental education” (0.25), and “sedimentation reduction effectiveness” (0.20), respectively. In addition, Program D has been calculated by FAHP with the highest score as a result of integrated sedimentation reduction from upstream to downstream as well as by the analyses of hydrodynamic simulation. This study suggests to select Program D by combing the approaches of AHP and hydrodynamic simulation with a consistent result to be a great value for practical purposes.