Study On The Impact Of Algal Blooms On Coastal Regional Economy

Over the past few decades, with the rapid development of China’s urbanizationand industrialization, serious pollution problems are coming. A large amount ofsewage is discharged into the sea, causing the eutrophication of the sea is gettingworse, and the change of global climate intensified the occurrence of algal blooms.Then, the economic losses caused by algal blooms are increasing. In this paper, theresearch object is the impact of algal blooms on regional economy. From manydifferent perspectives, this damage can be changed into an amount of money by acertain way.The disaster economics is the starting point of this paper, welfare economics andregional economics are the basic theories, a variety of assessment methods are used toassess the effects of algal blooms on the regional economy.Firstly, some relevant concepts and theories are combed, and take algal blooms asresearch object. Then make a detailed analysis on the impact of algal blooms on thecoastal economic development. When determine the impacted scopes of algal bloomsdisasters, many factors are considered including characteristics of algal blooms, themodel of regional economic development. At last, the impacted scopes are dividedinto fisheries, tourism and marine ecosystem services, which marine ecosystemservices also including four functional groups: provisioning services, regulatingservices, cultural services, supporting services, and further can be divided into17small functions. There are some details about the17functions in this paper. Basedupon the details, the best assessment methods can be selected. Using these methods,the damage to the marine ecosystem services can be turned into economic volume. Inaddition, loss assessment described in this article only including one-time loss, secondary economic losses are not considered, such as the impact on employment,transportation and other aspects.When selecting assessment methods, the methods of ecosystem valuation arereferenced: direct marketing value method, alternative marketing method, andhypothetical marketing method. Productivity changing method is used for evaluatingthe loss of algal blooms on fisheries; Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is used forevaluating the loss of algal blooms on tourism. Marine ecosystem is complex, thereare many functions, and appropriate method will be selected according to thecharacteristics of each function, such as productivity changing method, thereplacement cost method, CVM. Based on the theoretical analysis, this paper focuseson ulvaprolifera, which has tremendous impacts on Qingdao in recent years. Make astudy about ulvaprolifera, such as the growth characteristics, the scope and duration ofinfluence; Shandong Peninsula geographical features and characteristics of coastalregional economic development are also analyzed. An Empirical Analysis about theloss of some functions caused by ulvaprolifera, take2013for example. In2013, apractical research has been done to know the major impact that ulvaprolifera on thelocal fisheries, and evaluating the loss of ulvaprolifera on local biggest holothuriansnursery garden. The amount of loss for holothurians nursery garden is384millionyuan. The economic losses of ulvaprolifera on tourism are also evaluated by CVM,and the loss is1.405billion yuan. Considering the outbreak time of ulvaprolifera andits own characteristics, ten of the local marine ecosystem services functions aredamaged. In the end, some losses are transformed into economic amount, but otherscannot be transformed due to the limited professional knowledge and the dataavailability. The loss for culture value is0.86million yuan, and the loss for aestheticvalue is1.016billion yuan. Finally, discuss the algal blooms on governance andutilization by taking ulvaprolifera, one special algal bloom, for example.This article studies show that the indirect losses caused by algal blooms disastersare huge, especially for the marine ecosystem service functions, and have potentialimpact to local regional economic development. To quantify the impact of algalblooms on coastal socio-economic is very meaningful, this kind of impact can be expressed by an economic way. So that, it is good for marine environment protectionand the sustainable use of the marine resources; can also provide the managementbasis for sustainable of local economic development.