The study looked at how the marshes in the Sanjiang Plain in China changed over 20 years. They used a mix of landscape ecology and GIS to see how the marshes shifted. The marsh area decreased a lot from 1980 to 1996, but the decrease slowed from 1996 to 2000. The marsh broke up into more pieces at first, but then the fragmentation decreased. The reclaimed marshes mostly turned into paddy fields and dry land. Overall, the center of the marshes moved from the northeast to the southwest, and the movement from east to west was faster.