Assessment of the impacts of major threats to marine biodiversity in coastal
waters of Yantai and Dalian, China
Bei Huang
Zhoushan Marine Ecological Environmental Monitoring Station, ZhouShan City, ZheJiang Province,
PR China.
E-mail:
bighb@163.com
Biodiversity is important for the survival and development of human society, affects
various aspects of our lives, and is being destroyed by the rapid expansion of modern
societies and economies. Changhai County and Changdao County are important
island counties in northeast China. Both are famous northern Chinese cities for fishery
resources. Changhai and Changdao have established marine fishery and aquaculture
as primary industries. They are rich in various biological resources, with abundant
fishery yields of shrimp, globefish, flounder, and high aquaculture production of sea
cucumber, abalone, scallop, and ark clam. The present study assessed the status of
biodiversity and environmental protection in typical coastal zones of northern China
and investigated the impacts of socio-economic development on local biodiversity.
This analysis was based on long-term data on social economic development in
Changhai and Changdao and related studies of the ecological environment during
2004-2013 using the PSR framework, ,. Based on the characteristics of
socio-economic and ecological environment states in Changhai and Changdao,
indicators were selected for the marine biodiversity assessment framework
andbaseline values were set based on the national/industrial standards, statistical
yearbook series, and marine environment monitoring datasets. Weight values were
calculated with the Analytical Hierarchy Process approach.
The results of marine biodiversity assessment in Changhai showed that the
Marine Biodiversity Index reached the maximum at 0.688 and thus matched to level
Good in 2007, and declined to 0.500 and level down to Medium in 2012. During the
investigated period, the state of marine biodiversity in 2004-2008 was better than that
in 2009-2013. The changes of Pressure, State, and Response indices revealed that the
trend of Pressure indicator scores showed an obvious decreasing trend, thus
suggesting growing pressures on the local ecological environment and marine
biodiversity, and raised concerns about potential impacts to biodiversity in Changhai.
The results of marine biodiversity assessment in Changdao showed that the
status of marine biodiversity is good. The Marine Biodiversity Index values were
above 0.6 and were graded as Good during the whole studied period, suggesting a
relatively stable state of marine biodiversity with few fluctuations. The changes of
Pressure, State, and Response indices revealed that the trends of Pressure indicators
showed some fluctuations, suggesting growing pressures on the local ecological
environment and marine biodiversity, and raising concerns about potential impacts to
biodiversity in Changdao.