Study on regional system of man-sea relationship and its synergetic development in the coastal regions of China

Abstract

The oceans have long been recognized as increasingly important natural resources for humans. Humans, especially coastal residents, depend on ocean systems for essential and valuable life-supporting provisions, such as ocean resources, ocean traffic, seashore tourism,etc. Oceans are extremely sensitive and vulnerable, regardless of their substantial productivity.Long-term of ocean-and land-based human activities have increasingly threatened the oceans through direct and indirect means and caused the degradation of structure, function and provision service of ocean systems. Recently, theoretical and practical studies on man-land relationship have already become a research hotspot both at home and abroad. However, there are relatively few studies on man-sea relationship. Furthermore, regional system of man-sea relationship is a complex system that constitutes two relatively independent, but interactional subsystems, human and ocean. Yet, few studies have focused on the perspective of complex system. For decades, marine economy has been rapidly developing in China, and human impact on marine is gradually deepened. In this context, studies on regional system of man-sea relationship will be of important theoretical and practical significance to the coastal regions of China. Referring information entropy and synergetic theory, this study proposes a general concept of synergetic development mechanism of regional system of man-sea relationship, and sets up the index system of development level assessment. Then, the development levels of human-society and marine resources-environment subsystems were calculated by AHP-PP model from 1996 to 2012 in coastal regions of China. Information entropy scores and order degrees of regional system of man-sea relationship are calculated by using information entropy model in the article. The results indicate that information entropy scores of regional system of man-sea relationship go down with each passing year and order degrees show an upward trend,but regional differences are noticeable in coastal regions of China. Furthermore, the synergetic development model of regional system of man-sea relationship was established for recognizing the synergetic development classification of regional systems and parameters of the model are estimated by accelerating genetic algorithm. The findings confirm that three man-sea relationship patterns are recognized in the eleven coastal provinces. The man-sea relationship of Hubei, Guangxi and Hainan are conflicting; Tianjin, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian are predatory; and Shanghai, Shandong, and Guangdong are cooperative. The causes for these different synergetic development patterns are analyzed and countermeasures for enhancing synergetic development are briefly put forward in this study.