Adaptive management of estuarine resource utilization and wetland conservation based on multi-temporal remote sensing: A case study of Minjiang Estuary, China

Abstract

Adaptive management of estuarine resource utilization and wetland conservation (ERU&WC) have both socioeconomic and ecological implications because estuaries involve plentiful navigation, aquaculture, wetland, and land-reclamation resources but are featured with complexity and vulnerability of hydrodynamics, morphodynamics, and ecological processes. To achieve positive synergistic effects and prevent disasters by optimizing the allocation of estuarine space to various activities and biological habitats, there is a need to track the estuarine evolutionary trajectories and demarcate the spatial function subareas. However, estuarine field data acquisition is time-consuming, spatially limited, expensive, and there are some areas not accessible due to shallowness or moving sand bars. This paper presents an exact estuarine morphodynamics acquisition and evolution analysis based on multi-temporal remote sensing images, with Minjiang Estuary, China as a case study. The imageries with high tide level (1995, 2017) and low tide level (1995, 2002, 2010, and 2017) were chosen to track the changes of coastline, tidal flat, channel, sand bar, sand island, wetland vegetation, and the spatial heterogeneity of Minjiang Estuary, and the results show visually the section of shoreline change, the pattern of TCSS change and the part of tidal flat vegetation change, which are the fundamental data for demarcating the spatial function subareas. Also, the adaptive management rule was explored, and the schematic diagram of the estuarine morphodynamic evolution process and the framework of ERU&WC adaptive management were outlined. The research result will provide technical support and theoretical guidance for the management of other estuarine environments.