Driving forces and management strategies for estuaries in northern China

Abstract

Estuaries, which lie at the end of rivers, belong to the interlocking area between marine ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems. In the estuary region, there are plenty of biological resources that carry many important ecosystem services. However, severe degradation of the estuary ecosystem in northern China has been caused by anthropogenic disturbances, including water pollution from upstream area, change of marine environmental dynamics, animal habitat loss, and unreasonable exploitation in the estuary region. In order to provide scientific evidence for restoration and conservation of the estuary ecosystem, we collected data from published literature to analyze the ecological problems in several main estuary regions in northern China, such as the Yellow River estuary, Liaohe River estuary, Haihe River estuary, Yalu River estuary, and some others. The main ecological problems in the estuary region of northern China include the input decrease of fresh water from rivers, the change of the sediment input from rivers, the destruction of the estuary wetland ecosystem, the environmental pollution in the estuary region, the erosion in the estuary region, seawater encroachment, the biodiversity decline of the estuary region, and the depletion of the fish resources in the estuary region. Meanwhile, the driving forces for these ecological problems in the estuary region were also assessed. Based on the analysis of these driving forces, we propose several pieces of advice for integrated estuary management in northern China, including the creation of a management system for estuary conservation, improvement of the means and strength of the environmental law execution, increased investment on scientific research in the estuary ecosystem, improvement of public participation on the conservation for the estuary environment and biodiversity, and construction of a monitoring system for the estuary environment.