GUO Jingmei    School of Environment

ABSTRACT

The coastal zone has abundant resources, excellent environment, and superior location. Due to the continuous large-scale development and utilization by humans, the health of the coastal zone ecosystem is facing serious challenges. In this context, the attention to coastal ecological environment issues is increasing. Exploring the vulnerability assessment model of coastal ecosystems and analyzing the influencing factors of coastal vulnerability are of great significance for protecting the coastal ecological environment. This study combines domestic and international research progress to construct a coastal zone vulnerability evaluation system based on the DPSIR model. Taking the Jinzhou Bay and Liaohe River Delta regions as examples, based on a large amount of socio-economic and literature data, vulnerability evaluation indicators are selected to evaluate coastal zone vulnerability from five aspects: driving force, pressure, state, impact, and response. The Analytic Hierarchy Process and Entropy Weight Method are used to comprehensively analyze the evaluation indicators, Based on the evaluation results, analyze the influencing factors of coastal zone vulnerability changes over a 20-year time scale, and propose suggestions for coastal zone environmental protection and management.

The main research conclusions are as follows:

(1) Selecting data from 2000 to 2020, the vulnerability assessment results of coastal zones were graded on a 5-year scale, and the trend of vulnerability levels was obtained: there were significant differences in coastal zone vulnerability regions, with the highest value of 0.542 and the lowest value of 0.309 in the Jinzhou Bay coastal zone region, and the highest value of 0.513 and the lowest value of 0.306 in the Liaohe Delta region. The overall trend of the two regions remained consistent. In 2020, both regions were in a generally fragile state. According to the comprehensive ecological vulnerability assessment level, this state is considered to be able to maintain basic functions under certain circumstances. Once disturbed, it is difficult to recover the situation and should be highly valued.

(2) By constructing a matrix of indicator variables, the contribution of indicators to the vulnerability of coastal zones under each subsystem was calculated, and it was found that human interference factors have the greatest contribution to vulnerability. Among them, the main contribution indicators in the Jinzhou Bay area are population density (0.242), urbanization rate of permanent population (0.234), and phytoplankton diversity (0.233) The area of seawater aquaculture areas (0.230) and the proportion of excellent seawater quality in nearshore waters (0.224), among which the main contributing indicators of the Liaohe River Delta are the urbanization rate of the permanent population (0.237), seawater aquaculture yield (0.232), phytoplankton diversity (0.225), zooplankton diversity (0.225), and population density (0.223).

(3) Comprehensively analyze the vulnerability status of typical coastal zones, and analyze the ecological and environmental issues of the study area for different types of coastal zones. There were problems with excessive reclamation and development, difficult resolution of seawater pollution, and severe retreat of natural shorelines in Jinzhou Bay. The Liaohe River Delta mainly suffers from the integration of multiple industries, encroaching on wetland area, deteriorating water quality in coastal wetlands, and environmental degradation leading to the degradation of red beaches.

(4) In response to the problems existing in different typical coastal zones, the following sustainable development suggestions were proposed for the research area. In the future, Jinzhou Bay should control and standardize the utilization of coastal zones, strictly control the amount of pollutants entering the sea, protect the coastline and erosion prevention and control functional areas. In the future, the Liaohe River Delta should promote the optimization of spatial structure, strengthen pollution source monitoring and governance, and strengthen the governance of biodiversity protection functional areas.

Read the article here:     基于DPSIR模型的海岸带生态脆弱性研究以锦州湾和辽河三角洲为例.pdf