Abstract
Oceans and their resources are experiencing immense pressure because of human exploitation. The intensive use of sea areas has become an important method in solving the contradiction between ocean supply and demand, thereby ensuring sustainable marine economy development, tapping potential sea-area utilization, reasonably allocating sea-area utilization structures, and increasing marine economic benefits. This paper explores the definition and connotation of intensive sea-area use and constructs an evaluation index system based on marine input intensity, marine utilization structure, marine economic benefit, and marine ecological environment. Multi-objective variable fuzzy set theory and fuzzy decision analysis methods were used to evaluate the intensive sea-area utilization in the Liaoning Coastal Economic Zone of China during 2004–2016. The spatial differentiation characteristics of intensive sea-area use were analysed using cluster analysis. The research result showed that: (1) Intensive utilization level of the Liaoning coastal economic zone has gradually increased, while it is still in a moderately weak level; (2) Sea area intensive utilization varied in degrees and fluctuates in the six cities under the jurisdiction of the Liaoning coastal economic zone; and (3) Marine input intensity, marine utilization structure, marine economic benefit, and marine sustainability indexes have increased in the cities, thereby exhibiting improvements in the Liaoning coastal economic zone.
Highlights
China’s marine space development is at a critical stage of transformation, and the material flow and energy exchange in the coastal zone are more frequent
It is an important task to optimize the allocation of sea area utilization structure, improve the output of unit area, save and intensively use sea resources, which is an important topic to ensure the coordinated development of human and sea, promote the high-quality development of marine economy and solve the difficulties of space expansion and utilization in coastal areas
This study evaluated the intensive utilization level at the Liaoning coastal economic belt based on the multi-objective variable fuzzy method
Summary
China’s marine space development is at a critical stage of transformation, and the material flow and energy exchange in the coastal zone are more frequent. This paper attempts to utilize the definition and connotation of intensive sea-area use based on the man-sea regional system [1, 43,44,45,46] and intensive utilization [15,16,17,18, 23, 26] It aims to improve the resource allocation efficiency, utilization rate, social benefits by increasing the factor of investment, management of resource utilization, and utilization structure at coastal areas. The dynamic and relative concept of intensive sea use represents marine economic development at an appropriate scale in a specific period and within a specific region under current or foreseeable future conditions and provides for processes for improving the utilization rate of coastal resources with moderating supply to sea areas to enhance economic output and social benefits from coastal resources. The intensive sea use reflects multiple connotations including a more rational utilization structure, an improved economic benefit, and the sustainable utilization of sea areas
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