Study On Assessment Of Coastal Wetland Restoration

With the rapid development of economy and intense human activities in coastalareas, the degradation and restoration of coastal wetland have attracted more attentionall around the world. Therefore, it's meaningful to study the methodology forassessing restoration of coastal wetland, which can provide useful experience forfuture restoration programs and improve restoration effects.Based on the summaries of related researches on restoration assessment, themain restoration goal was identified, with the characteristics of coastal wetlandecosystem taken account of. Then, a series of indicators were selected and the methodfor assessing restoration assessment for coastal wetland was put forward on the basisof theories of environmental science, landscape ecology and marine ecology. Finally,this method was applied to Wuyuan Bay, which is a pioneer practice of urban coastalwetland restoration in China. The main contents and results are as follows:(1) By synthetically considering the goals of ecological restoration and thecharacteristics of coastal wetlands, this study identified the main goals of coastalwetland ecological restrotation. By considering multiple factors, the temporal andspatial scale for accessment of ecological restoration were defined.(2) According to restoration goal, characteristics of structure and function ofcoastal wetland, a series of indicators for assessing restoration effectiveness of coastalwetland were selected in terms of hydrological conditions, environmental quality,bio-ecology and landscape patterns. And then, comprehensive index of restorationeffetiveness of coastal wetland, namely restoration effect index (REI), was calculatedbased on time series comparision methods.(3) The assessment method was applied to Wuyuan Bay. The result showed thatthe REI of Wuyuan Bay was78, indicating that the restoration effectiveness inWuyuan Bay was significant. Compared with state before restoration, it was foundthat hydrological conditions improved significantly, and also biodiversity index ofbenthos and the ratio of vegetation coverage increased greatly. The concentrations ofthe following indicators, the dissolved inorganic nitrogen and active phosphate in seawater, pollutions in sediment were found to decrease. However, some indictorsshowed deteriorating, including biodiversity of phytoplankton and water bird. Thediversity index as well as evenness index of landscape decreased, which led to the factthat the effect of restoration is not significant, because of greatly increase of area ofartificial landscape.