Ecosystem Health Assessment Study Of Cities Along The Yangtze River In Jiangsu

The city is the most prominent region, which is the contradict- tion between economic development and ecological protecttion. Urban ecosystem health should be given enough attention as a basis of urban development and urban program. Urban ecosystem health is based on the human system health, human health is closely relative to ecosystem health, and the healthy urban ecosystem is good for maintaining human health. As a rapid urbanizing region, ecosystem health is paid more attention along the Yangtze River cities of Jiangsu Province. The health evaluation will help us to understand the right direction, which is mastering the region's urban ecosystem protection and efficient development, and provide a theoretical basis and the practical guidance for urban planning, urban upgrading, environmental management and implementing the city harmonious and healthy development.Based on ecology, health studies, urban studies and theories of systems analysis, this present study constructs a health assess- ment index system of more complete urban ecosystem, and estab- lishes evaluation criteria. Cities along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province as the research objects, the present study makes a contrastive analysis to 2000-2008 urban ecosystem health level with the fuzzy mathematics method. Meanwhile, the present study establishes the forecasting model and makes the dynamic forecast to ecosystem health status of 2009-2014 eight cities along the Yangtze River, through the Origin7.5 software, with the trend line prediction method. Research results are as follows:(1) The present study regards five major elements as the first index of the urban ecosystem health evaluation, which are the vigor, organizational structure, resilience, maintenance of ecosystem services and population health. And it puts forward the second and third indexes, which are 36 specific indexes, for the connotation of the first index and data possibility, and finally forms the index system of urban ecosystem health assessment. With the help of healthy city criterion at home and abroad, it defines the evaluation hierarchy, that is, sick, unhealthy, sub-health, healthy and very healthy.(2) Based on he fuzzy comprehensive evaluation results, the present study shows that both the overall health degree and the healthy level of each element are improved for 2000-2008 eight cities along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu, which is resulted from developed economy of these cities. However, the urban ecosystem health level of these cities exist some differences, that is, the ecosystem health level of the southern cities of Jiangsu is higher than one of Soviet cities. The main reasons are: the opening degree of the southern cities of Jiangsu is higher than the medium cities of Jiangsu, which leads to the solider economy and more healthy vigor of the former. Meanwhile, the more perfect urban infrastructure also speeds up the improvement of people's living standards. (3) According to the results of the forecast model, the present study shows that 2009-2014 eight urban whole ecosystem health level improves slightly except Nanjing. The urban ecosystem health index of majority cities may be over 0.8, which reaches the great healthy level. And it also shows the average of Sunan urban ecosystem health index is higher than the Su medium-sized cities'. Apart from resilience factors, health statuses of the other elements all are raised to some extent.