Urban parks are one of the most important elements of urban green infrastructure1. Parks are not only recreation places for urban dwellers and playgrounds for children, but also habitats and shelters for wildlife in the city2. Parks can be a hotspot of urban biodiversity3, but biodiversity is declining due to human disturbance4. Most studies on urban parks include biodiversity assessment methods5,6 and their driving factors1,7, sustainable planning and management schemes8,9 and ecological service functions2. However, biotope loss plays a dominant role in the decline of biodiversity10. Understanding the biotope’s composition, spatial pattern and problems is important in planning potential methods for conservation and promotion of biodiversity in urban parks.
Previous studies show that biotope mapping can reveal problems with biotopes in study sites11. Germany carried out biotope mapping in cities and established the Working Group on Biotope Mapping in Urban Areas12. Sukopp and Weiler, the experts in the Working Group, recommended biotope mapping with details and standards in different cities, as well as methods for formulating biodiversity conservation strategies. In Turkey, they paid more attention to the semi-natural biotopes and their sensitivity to human disturbance in the city, and the results were used to guide urban management11. The “Germany Experience” spread to South Korea where biotope mapping was carried out in major cities. However, the wide variations in geography, culture and objectives meant the German experience was not fully applicable to South Korea, and the country developed new methods for biotope classification and evaluation suitable for their context13. Biotope mapping has also been carried out in the UK14, Sweden15 and Greece16, and has promoted the sustainable and innovative development of these countries in urban biodiversity conservation, ecological spatial planning and ecosystem management. Nevertheless, there are few studies on biotope mapping in China, a country which also has a serious biodiversity crisis.
In China, Li et al.17 recommended the methods, procedures and classification system of biotope mapping from Germany in detail. Meng et al.18 suggested that biotope mapping could be carried out in Western China because of the serious ecological damage during the Western Development Strategy. Some scholars have put biotope mapping into practice in cities such as Shanghai, Xi'an and Nanjing, according to the classification system based on land cover types, for example, residential land, industrial land and green space19,20,21. However, in this system and scale, the whole park is regarded as one type of land cover, ignoring the heterogeneity of the biotopes within the park, which will affect the accuracy of biodiversity maintenance and conservation in urban parks. Qiu et al.22 and Zhang et al.23 have made innovations in the classification scheme respectively. The work of Qiu et al. integrated vegetation structure such as vertical structure and the age of dominant species in the system and applied it at the city scale, but did not apply it in small-scale study sites to verify its applicability. The concept of Zhang et al. incorporated aspects of landscape architecture and applied them at the park scale, but it focuses more on the landscape perspective and less on ecological processes. Therefore, further study on biotope mapping is required, particularly for small-scale biotope classification.
To address the difficulties of assessing a park’s biotope, a more accurate evaluation approach is also necessary. However, most evaluation systems focus on identifying the biotope types with conservation value, then putting forward protection suggestions for those13,16,21,24. For the selected at risk biotope types, only a few studies continue to explore the causes of the problems and how to solve them. Using Riverside Park, Yichang as an example, the purpose of this study is to establish a system of biotope classification, evaluation and application that is scientifically sound and applicable to urban parks in China. It can be used to provide professionals a reference for translating urban biodiversity conservation and restoration studies into reality.