The Compatibility-Protection Evaluation System And Its Application In Marine Function Zoning

Marine functional zoning has become a crucial way to achieve marine sustainable development with regard to a trade-off in marine development and environmental protection in China.Though marine functional zoning(more commonly termed as"marine spatial planning" in the world)has been widely carried out currently,a periodical revision has been called for to meet the natural environment and social demand dynamics for marine adaptive management.In addition to compiling marine functional zoning for marine development and management,more and more researchers have paid attention to the effectiveness evaluation of zoning.Thus,the unreasonable part of the sea area management process will be able to adjust to enhance the level of marine development and protection.There are some existed problems regarding current marine functional zoning evaluation,methodology based on ocean characteristics is still lacking and a larger amount of zoning evaluation focus on the effectiveness after the implementation rather than a comprehensive assessment of the marine functional zoning plan before its implementation.In this study,the theoretical study and practical assessment of marine functional zoning has been summarized,a Compatibility-Protection Evaluation System(CPES)was established which was applied to compare different marine functional zoning schemes of Xiamen China.The CPES includes 3 parts:Sea Use Intensity Value(SUIV)for the intensity of marine development;Sea Use Conflicts Intenstiy(SUCI)for the coordination of marine development;and the Key Ecological Area Protection Index(KEPI)for the protection degree of key ecological areas.Marine functional zoning schemes in Xiamen West Sea Area was selected as a case study to evaluate the 3 indexes of CPES respectively.Both CPESs of marine functional zoning Scheme 2007-2012 and Scheme 2013-2020 in Xiamen was analyzed.The assessment results show that the average SUIV in each sea area unit grid is 4.20,and the intensity of sea use conflict in each sea area unit grid is 6.83 while the KEPI is 0.45 for the Scheme 2013-2020;and the corresponding values of the Scheme 2007-2012 were 3.51,5.46 and 0.59.Compared with results of the Scheme 2007-2012,the intensity of sea use and sea use conflicts in the western seas of the Scheme 2013-2020 increased,and the key ecological areas protection degree decreased.According to the results of this case study,the evaluation methods of intensity of marine development,coordination of marine development and the degree of key ecological protection in CPES are based on the ocean characteristics,data used in these methods are available and the evaluation results has a certain objectivity.In addition,the successful application of CPES in this case shows that the CPES is feasible and the possibility of CPES's application in a lager jurisdictional sea area.This study proposes a Compatibility-Protection Evaluation System(CPES)including intensity of marine development,the coordination of marine development and the degree of key ecological protection,and selects Xiamen marine functional zoning plan as a case study,then work out the CPESs.Finally,this study compared the CPES results of two versions of Xiamen marine functional zoning plan.The assessment system further enriches and improves the theory and method of evaluation of marine functional zoning and provides a reference for the evaluation of marine function zoning plans of different levels and scales.