Research On Non-resident Islands' Exploitation Suitability Based On Ecology And Economy

As the economy in coastal area developing rapidly, the conflict between population explosion and resources shortage is becoming more and more outstanding. Under these circumstances, attention is widely attracted to the sea covering 71% of the earth surface, especially to the islands among which non-resident ones with special ecosystem and potential value are worthy estate of our country. However, because of the poor economic condition and susceptive environment, added with irrational human activity, ecosystem in some non-resident islands has been destroyed badly. Hence, exploitation suitability assessment for non-resident islands, which can avoid blind development, is the foundation and precondition for appropriate use of them.In order to give some useful information for the development on non-resident islands, this paper assesses the exploitation suitability of them by setting indices systems which can fully show their ecological value and the development potential on them. The paper chooses Crocodile Island which locates in the Xiamen city as a case study, analyzes the status of this island using evaluation systems, and then determines the suitable orientation for its development. The main contents and results are as follows:(1) This paper takes the ecological characters of non-resident islands and their resource distributing condition into account, and then constructs indices systems for the ecology and economic potential assessment. The indicators of ecology protection importance are established in terms of four factors: ecosystem, environment, natural and cultural heritage and ecological damage indices, while indicators of exploitation economic feasibility mention other five aspects: spatial resources, life resources, energy and mineral resources, tourism resources, regional development condition. The meaning of each indicator mentioned above is analyzed respectively.(2) This paper uses AHP method to get weights of each indicator. This method includes following steps: object and hierarchical structure setting, judgement matrix construction based on expert consultation, and weight determination. The criteria for these indicators are established based on reference using. After that, we can get the values and ranks of both ecology protection importance and the economic exploitation feasibility, then the suitable orientation of non-resident islands can be determined.(3) This paper applies the assessment method to Crocodile Island in Xiamen city. The result of this research shows that ecology protection importance on Crocodile Island is in common level, while the exploitation economic feasibility level is comparatively high, especially the tourism value. The result suggests that Crocodile Island can be exploited moderately by developing ecotrourism. However, the exploitative intensity should be controlled base on the tourism capacity, and attention should be paid to entironment repair and conservation.