The Ecological Safety Assessment And Protection Strategy Analysis Based On GIS In The Coastal Zone Of Hainan Island

Ecological safety is the basic condition for living, which is associated with the socioeconomic development, sustainable use of natural resource and improvement of living conditions. Nowadays, the ecological safety research which centers on the environmental change has been the critical content of sustainable scientific study. In order to ensure the regional ecological safety, we need to set up assessment system for ecological safety condition, appraise the condition of natural resources and ecological environment for meeting the needs of social development and seek the factors that affect the ecological safety. Ecological safety assessment is a method by which we collect the information from ecosystem elements, apply relevant models and techniques to assess the feature of the ecological environment safety. Techniques related to Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System provide highly effective means for data retrieval and analytical processing, which playing key roles in ground information collection, model calculation, spatial analysis in ecological safety research on a regional scale.With abundant natural resources, superior geographic locations and suitable conditions for residence, coastal zones are always the most populated and economically developed regions. However, overexploitation of natural resources disrupts the proper structures and functions of ecosystems in coastal zones, causing the ecosystems to change or even degrade. Series of environmental problems, such as artificial reconfiguration of natural landscape, decreasing vegetation cover, damage to shelter forest and natural wetland and declining inshore water quality all threaten the regional ecological safety. Hence the ability of integrated supervision on environment should be enhanced during the process of regional development and construction to maintain the ecological equilibrium and sustainable use of resources. Coastal zones in Hainan province are regarded as the study areas in this paper. Threat characteristics of regional ecological environment in coastal zones are analyzed by support of RS and GIS and the ecological safety conditions of study areas are systematically assessed and analyzed. The main researches completed are listed below:(1) Theoretical research on ecological safety of coastal zone. Based on retrospection of the accomplished research concerning the national and international ecological safety theories, the ecosystem service function theory, sustainable development theory and the features of ecological environment and threat pressure in coastal zones, we discussed the definition and connotation of ecological safety of coastal zones, the assessment index system and methods.(2) Application of RS and GIS in ecological safety assessment. With the aid of RS and GIS techniques and the use of RS information source and special data, RS information is extracted and the spatial representation of statistical data is realized. Quantified and visualized expression of integrated assessment results is achieved through the spatial analysis function of GIS.(3) Ecological safety assessment of coastal zones in Hainan. On the basis of the field investigation of conditions of ecological environment and economic development in coastal areas, we adopt the ecological safety concept model under the ecosystem management frame, set up the assessment index system from the aspects of environmental pressure and ecosystem service function, assess the ecological safety of coastal zones by principal component analysis and perform the comprehensive analysis of ecological safety condition and pattern characteristics of the coastal zones.(4) The protection measures for ecological safety of the coastal zones. The implementation of ecological safety assessment is critical to ecosystem management. According to the completed assessment on the current ecological safety condition, the coastal zones are divided into priority zones, restrictive development zones and optimized development zones, where the protection measures for maintaining the regional ecological safety and the measures for the purposes of ecological protection and ecological construction should be established, aiming at existing ecological issues and threat factor sub-regions.