Abstract: Waterbirds are important components of wetland ecosystems, which are regarded as indicators used to monitor the quality of wetland environment owing to their sensibility to environmental change. Reclamation has seriously damaged the ecological environment of wetland and caused significant impacts on waterbird populations, behaviors and habitats. This paper analyzed the effects of reclamation on the population and diversity of birds in the aspects of population ecology, summarized the effects of reclamation on feeding, reproduction, migration and mixedspecies flocks, and discussed the effects of reclamation on habitat use and selection. Reclamation usually reduces the population of specialist rather than the generalist. The intensity of reclamation determines the diversity of waterbirds. Moderate reclamation makes habitat diversified, which is conducive to increase the diversity of waterbirds, and excessive reclamation makes habitat fragmented, which decreases diversity of waterbirds. The situation of habitat after reclamation affects waterbird feeding, reproduction, migration, mixedspecies flocks and habitat selection. More-over, the reduced tidalflat area and changed plant community are not conducive to the foraging and inhabitation of grallatores, while the artificial wetland provides abundant food sources and good habitat for natatores. We should expand the spatial and temporal scales of the research to analyze the mechanism of reclamation effect and analyze a variety of waterbirds together to find the mechanism of response to the reclamation in the future research.

Key words: Grain for Green Project, remote sensing, the region containing the upper and middle reaches of China’s Yangtze River, NDVI