Effectiveness Of Environmental Interpretation Of The Wetland Communication And Education Centers In Middle And Lower Reachs Of Yangtze River

China’s national wetland parks and its associated environmental interpretation system have been developing rapidly in recent decade. However, major gaps remain, in particular, lack of national standards for the development of environmental interpretations, as well as its effectiveness assessment protocol. Report on effectiveness assessment has rarely been published despite hundreds of visitor centers been developed. In order to understand the effectiveness of the National Wetland Museum in environmental interpretations, and develop methodology for its effectiveness assessment, this study chosen the National Wetland Museum of China,Qin Lake Wetland Museum, East Dongting Lake Wetlands Education Center, as case study sites.Sampling questionnaire survey has been adopted for the research by choosing 300 tourists before they visit the museum and 300 after the visit. Then, based on the narration media, like museum narrators, narration boards, vedios, computer touch screens, analogue wet landscape, real object models and narration manuals, quantitative analysis is conducted on the tourists’ knowledge about its importance before visit and the actual experience after the visit. By means of IPAanalysis method, the tourists’ general content degrees with the environment narrations of Chinese national wetland museum, Qinhu wetland science museum, West Dongting wetland communication and education center are 4.17, 4.05 and 4.22, respectively. The results suggest the tourists are generally contented with the narration effects in the three communication and education centers. Among all the parameters, the narration media enjoying the highest satisfaction at Chinese national wetland museum is real display models with 4.31 on average value, and the one having the lowest satisfication is videos with 3.88 average value. And the tourists give the highest average value of 4.21 to narrators at Qinhu science museum, and the lowest to the videos which is 3.88. While at the East Dongting wetland propaganda and education center, tourists are most contented with the narrators and least with the narration manuals and the computer touch screen, of which the average values are 4.60 and 4.00, respectively.The interpretation weakness of the National Wetland Museum of China was analyzed and five suggestions were then arose as follow:upgrade the interpretive facilities, optimize arrangement and guiding function of the interpretive panels, weaken the usage of multimedia seasonally, improve interaction of the diorama and enhance distribution of the interpretive materials.