Ecological Risk Assessment Of Strategic Decision Making In Coastal Area

Coastal zone, located in the transition area between terrestrial land and ocean, is one of the most sensitive ecosystems of natural disasters in the world, such as, typhoon, tsunami, etc. Due to its advantageous location and highly abundant natural resources, coastal zone has commonly been a center of dense population, intensive anthropogenic activities, and rapid economic development, which has brought about a series of environmental problems to make coastal and marine ecosystems seriously deteriorated and highly vulnerable. Both natural and anthropogenic factors have contributed to huge potentially risk to ecosystem’s heath and security in coastal area. What the most fundamental and effective way to prevent and mitigate considerable ecological loss caused by risk events with uncertainty, is to take the ecological risk factors into account in strategic decision processes. Therefore, it is significantly important to carry out studies on ecological risk assessment of strategic decision making processes in coastal area, which provides scientific support for strategic decision making process, prevents and mitigates ecological risk in the strategic level, and more importantly promotes the sustainable development in coastal zone.In this paper, multi-disciplinary theories and methods, such as, ecology, strategic decision making, geography, etc., were applied to systematically study the ecological risk assessment of strategic decision making in coastal area, mainly including its definition and connotation, assessment frameworks, approaches and methods. At the same time, case studies were conducted for the ecological risk assessment of principal coastal functional zoning in Xiamen Bay and Luoyuan Bay. The main findings of this thesis are as follows.(1) The definition and connotation of ecological risk assessment of strategic decision making in coastal area was analyzed and defined based on the analysis of the connotation and characteristics of coastal zone, strategic decision making process and its practice in coastal area, ecological risk assessment, etc.(2) Based on multi-dimension decision making (MDDM) approach, through the analysis and comparison of existing ecological risk assessment frameworks, and combined the requirements for strategic decision making process in coastal area, ecological risk assessment framework of strategic decision making in coastal area was set up in view of the idea of procedure-oriented approach, which includes three different phases of ecological risk assessment, i.e., the ecological risk assessment before decision-making process which provides support for the selection of decision alternatives, the ecological risk assessment in decision making process which provides support for the determination of optimal decision, and the ecological risk assessment in latter stage which provides support for ecological risk management.(3) Based on through analysis and comparison of existing ecological risk assessment methods, the methodologies for the ecological risk assessment of strategic decision making process in coastal area were established according to the requirements of strategic decision making process, which mainly focus on qualitative and semi-quantitative methods including retrospective ecological risk assessment, expert judgment, multi-dimension decision making (MDDM) method and its model compared with multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method, relative risk model and so on.(4) The ecological risk assessment approaches and methods mentioned above were applied to the principal coastal functional zoning in Xiamen Bay and Luoyuan Bay, Fujian, China. The results showed that, from the perspective of ecological risk, the optimal principal function is tourism for Xiamen Bay and its sub-areas, and fishery for Luoyuan Bay. After the principal function goes to be implemented in Xiamen Bay, the highest potential ecological risk source would be the risk caused by harbor and marine transportation, the highest potential ecological risk event would be oil spill, the ecosystem with the highest potential risk would be mangrove ecosystem, and ecosystem vulnerability would be the most significant ecological end for the impact of ecological risk. The greatest potential ecological risk area would be Jiulong River Estuary, and followed by Western Sea, Tongan Bay, Dadeng Sea, Southern Sea and Eastern Sea. Different from Xiamen Bay, the highest potential ecological risk source would be the risk caused by aquaculture in Luoyuan Bay, the highest potential ecological risk event would be habitat lost, the ecosystem with the highest potential risk would be mud flat ecosystem, and the loss or disappearance of important habitats would be the most significant ecological end for the impact of ecological risk.The results showed that the ecological risk assessment framework and methods set up in this study can combine ecological risk assessment into the strategic decision making processes in coastal area, provide an effective and valuable support for the strategic decision making processes in coastal area, and ensure coastal development towards sustainability.