Abstract

Rapid coastal urbanization poses severe threats to biodiversity through habitat fragmentation, making continuous monitoring of urban ecosystems essential. While birds serve as sensitive bio-indicators, the long-term spatiotemporal dynamics of their habitats and temporal shifts in environmental drivers remain poorly understood in high-density megacities. This study addresses this gap by developing a trend-explainable machine learning framework to evaluate avian habitat suitability across the western coast of Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020. We applied a standardized filtering protocol to citizen science data and integrated occupancy modeling with a Random Forest algorithm to simulate habitat distributions at 30 m resolution. Spatiotemporal habitat alterations were quantified using Mann–Kendall trend analysis, while SHAP was utilized to diagnose the changing importance and non-linear thresholds of ecological drivers over the decade. Our findings reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity among six avian guilds. Habitat quality for terrestrial birds, raptors, and songbirds degraded severely in northern industrial regions, whereas targeted ecological restoration facilitated recovery in southern and western urban cores. The analysis further demonstrates dynamic temporal shifts in environmental responses. The restrictive impact of anthropogenic stressors including population density and nighttime light weakened for terrestrial and canopy-dwelling guilds but intensified for waterfowl. Concurrently, natural elements such as vegetation coverage and proximity to water bodies became increasingly important. Based on these spatiotemporal patterns, we delineated five ecological zones to guide targeted conservation interventions. This research provides an analytical framework linking predictive modeling with mechanistic insights, supporting evidence-based biodiversity conservation and sustainable urban planning in rapidly developing coastal landscapes.

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