Effects of seashore reclamation activities on wetlands ecosystem, a case study in Yellow River Delta

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Tuesday 30 june 2015

12:42 - 12:45h at Asia (level 0)

Themes: (T) Managing deltas, (ST) Impacts of urbanization and land reclamation, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 5C. Deltas - Impacts

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Seashore reclamation is one of the most important utilization way of the oceans for human-beings. However, in recent years, with the expansion of human reclamation activities, coastal wetland ecosystems are deteriorated seriously. In this paper, with the background of seashore reclamation from 1960s to date in coastal wetlands in Yellow River Delta, we developed a holistic evaluation index system based on pressure-state-response model, in which the pressures included natural drives, such as climate changes, shoreline erosion, and anthropogenic drives, such as dam construction, road building, harbor construction, and land reclamation; the states included water environment, ecosystem, and geomorphology characteristics; and the responses mainly indicated the wetlands regulation and management measurements, such as environmental protection investment, and environmental flows recharging. We adopted the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate the holistic effect of seashore reclamation activities on coastal wetlands ecosystem. The results showed that the seashore reclamation activities in each age has the adverse effect on wetland ecosystem, and the effect is increasing along with the augment strength, and the states and responses has lied in at a critical level of ecosystem health.