Ecosystem health assessment: A PSR analysis combining AHP and FCE methods for Jiaozhou Bay, China1

Abstract

Wetlands are impacted by economic and political initiatives, and research on their ecosystem health is attracting increasing public attention. It is crucial that management decisions for wetland ecosystems quantify the whole ecosystem health status. In this paper, we aimed to precisely assess the ecosystem health for Jiaozhou Bay wetlands in Shandong Province, China in 2015. We selected 27 ecological, social, and economic indicators to establish the “Pressure-State-Response” (PSR) model, then used the methods of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) to calculate the weights for each indicator and acquire the health scores. Our result demonstrated that, overall, the ecosystem health score was 0.5390, which indicated that Jiaozhou Bay was in Ⅲ sub-healthy status. Health scores for “Pressure,” “State,” and “Response” were 0.4544, 0.5091, and 0.6220, respectively, which indicated that the three layers were in Ⅲ sub-healthy, Ⅲ sub-healthy, and Ⅱ generally healthy statuses, respectively. The wetland ecosystem health assessment can improve research and monitoring for the ecological resources, and provide a scientific basis for wetland planning and restoration, which further guarantees the sustainable utilization of wetland ecosystems.