Carrying Capacity Evaluation Of Typical Regional Coastal Zone

Integrated coastal carrying capacity （ICCC） is one of the important bases forcoastal and marine major function oriented zoning. It reflects the supporting capacityof the coastal environment, resources and ecosystem to human activities. It is also thefoundation to formate the priority development area, key development area, restricteddevelopment area, and prohibited development area on the coast. The paper isfocusing on the Tianjin Binhai New Area, which specified with bay-type, muddy coast,heavy developed with nearshore harbor and onshore industry. The ecological andenvironmental issues are analyzed by investigation with coastal urbanization andindustrization, then after the pressures to the coastal ecosystem are identified. TheICCC is evaluated to provide scientific supports to the developing layout plans,environmental management, and major function oriented zoning plans of Bohai area.The evaluation index for ICCC is built up in the paper, and the ICCC of TianjinBinhai New Area is assessed by using economic, social, ecological, environmental,and humanity data from2005-2009.The main ecological and environmental issues are identified by surveying anddiagnostic analysis, and the results shows:(1) pollution discharge water exceeds thedischarge allowable standard;(2) water quality of rivers’ outlets are heavily polluted;(3) nearshore seawater still are in bad quality, the polluted seas do not ameliorate;(4)the flux of pollutants into the sea is still huge. The dirver forces of these issues aremanifested in the following aspects:(1) high intensity of coastal developing; and (2)activities from large-scale urbanization and massive industrization in the coast ofTianjin Binhai New Area.An ICCC evaluation index is built up based on the Pressure-State-Response(P-S-R) concept model, which integrates various ICCC assessment methodsworldwidely as well. The ICCC evaluation index composes of objective layer, itemlayer, factor layer, and indicator layer. It contains14specific indicators to assess thecarrying capacity and the pressure conditions of the coast. The result shows thecarrying capacity indicator dramaticly declined with the development of Tianjin Binhai New Area. It is dropping from0.854to0.227from2005to2009, whilepressure indicator is rising from0.488to0.512. Following with the development ofthe Tianjin Binhai New Area, the intensity of development activities and economicactivities, as well as the population are rapidly grown. The ratio of carrying capacityto pressure decreased from1.75in2005to1.20in2007, then0.44in2009. All theseresults manifest that environmental pressure continuously increased in coastal zone,while the carrying capacity was getting worse.According to consequence of ICCC evaluation in Tianjin Binhai New Area, themanagement countermeasures are suggested as follows:(1) to consolidate the conceptof sustainable development, sustainable development must be able to achieve theeconomic goals and environmental objectives at the same time, so that regionalsustainable development can be a benign cycle track;(2) to optimize the industrialstructure to alleviate the pressure of the coastal zone, and give priority to thedevelopment of technological and ecological tertiary industry, promote eco-industrialtransition and transformation;(3) to adhere to the coordination of land and sea andoptimize the layout of the coastal zone, comprehensively consider and overall arrangeecosystem of coastal zone, harmonize the relationship between development andprotection between marine beach resources;(4) to put a high value on the economicdevelopment and the marine ecological environment improvement simultaneously.