Spatiotemporal remote sensing monitoring and driving mechanism analysis of vegetation quality in Crested Ibis habitats: a case study of Deqing County

To systematically evaluate the evolution of ecological quality and its driving mechanisms in Crested Ibis habitats, this study selected Deqing County in Zhejiang Province as the study area. Based on multi-source remote sensing data from 2001 to 2020, a Comprehensive Ecological Quality Index (CEQI) was constructed to analyse the spatio-temporal variation of NDVI, FVC, NPP, and EQI. Kernel density estimation was employed to identify biodiversity hotspots, while the geographical detector model was used to quantify the explanatory power and interactive effects of natural and anthropogenic factors on the spatial differentiation of ecological quality. The results showed that: (1) the overall ecological quality in Deqing County exhibited an increasing trend over the past two decades, with hills and wetlands showing good ecological conditions, whereas urban fringe areas had relatively low ecological quality; (2) the spatial distribution of species richness highly overlapped with areas of high ecological quality, indicating a significant coupling relationship between the two; (3) natural factors such as temperature, slope, and elevation played dominant roles in shaping ecological quality, and the interaction between natural and anthropogenic factors significantly enhanced its spatial explanatory power. These findings provide a scientific basis for habitat conservation and the spatial optimisation of ecological compensation strategies for the Crested Ibis.