GIS-based Integrated Assessment Of Environment Vulnerability In Yangtze River Delta China

Environment is material basis of human survival and development. But recent years, a series of environment problems such as water and soil loss, drought and flood, biodiversity drop etc constantly appear, environment of human survival present increasingly vulnerable trend. Yangtze River Delta as a very important region where economy rapidly develops takes on vulnerable characteristic with globle climate change and rapid process of industrialization and urbanization and becomes a new environment vulnerability zone. In view of environment problems and vulnerable characteristic of Yangtze River Delta, This paper choice indicators from nature and human aspects, based on geographic information system software, the vulnerability of environment in Yangtze River Delta is assessed by using spatial principal component analysis to generate evaluation indices and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine weights of evaluation factors. The causes of vulnerability are analyzed. The results show that the Taihu Lake Basin and the western and the middle of Zhejiang province are the most vulnerable regions, which account for 20.10% of the whole study area. The light and moderate vulnerable areas scattered throughout the entire basin, which account for 55.25% of the study area. The slight vulnerable areas mainly located in the northern of Jiangsu province and in the eastern of Zhejiang province, which account for 24.65% of the study area. The nature factors which influence the environmental vulnerability of Yangtze Delta are:days of temperature not less than 35℃, drought and flood frequency, elevation, etc. The human factors which influence the environmental vulnerability are:per capita arable land area, per capita water resources, the discharge of waste per capita, per capita emissions etc. The environment vulnerability index is classified into five grades from little to big by using natural breaks classification in geographic information system software, which separately represent slight, light, moderate, heavy and extrem vulnerability.The extremely vulnerable regions show the characteristics of high frequency of natural disasters, lack of resources, high pollution level, serious soil erosion and low biodiversity. Put forward countermeatures of environment improvement according as environment vulnerability comprehensive assesment outcome, subarea and vulnerable characteristic of Yangtze River Delta,For balancing the region development,we expect that it can provide theoretics basis for protection and constuction of environment and offer decision making basis of integrated management and resume of vulnerable environment improve,...