Study On The Loss Of Ecosystem Service Function Caused By Oil Spill Based On Emergy Analysis

The ocean, a pivot component of ecosystem on the earth, has been providingboth materials and services for human existence and development, which isconsidered as the essential environment people are dependent on. The escalatingdevelopment of economy in recent years has fueled the demand for petrol, therebyaugmenting the scale of offshore petrol and gas exploitation as well as oceantransportation of petrol. Meanwhile, there are increasingly frequent accidents of oilspill, causing quality deterioration of human survival environment on one hand andthe severe damage of marine ecosystem on the other hand. When tackling theseaccidents, more attentions are paid on the direct environmental loss, leaving theresearch into the loss of a more vital ocean ecosystem services not fully implemented,which further leads to the insufficient compensation for environmental damage causedby oil spill contamination. Therefore, the establishment of a scientific, reasonable,simple and feasible evaluative index of marine ecosystem services damage caused byoil spill carries great significance both in theoretical sense and in practical sense.Under the above circumstances, this paper will apply emergy theory into theevaluation of marine ecosystem service loss.The main contents of this paper are as follows. First, to investigate the effects ofoil spill on the each of marine ecosystem components and the existing oil spillecological damage assessment content and method, based on the comparison theprevious research, provide the services to the marine ecosystem of the reasonableclassification, contained in the various service sub service for damage identification.Second, based on the current situation that marine ecosystem service in our countryhas long been neglected and on the previous research outcome relating to this topic,this paper will introduce emergy theory into the loss evaluation of marine ecosystemservices caused by oil spill. Furthermore, a comprehensive system of damage evaluation of marine ecosystem service caused by oil spill has been established in thispaper, which leads to a more thorough, objective and trustworthy conclusion. Third,by putting the established evaluation system into the case study of “The Tasman Sea”,this paper will conduct a loss evaluation of marine ecosystem services.The result shows that support service has suffered the largest proportion of losscaused by this oil spill accident, the followings are provisioning services, regulatnionservices, cultural services, and supporting services. Benthic marine ecologicalenvironment has undergone the highest damage level caused by oil spill, whichremains consistent with the original evaluation result. The estimated gross loss ofmarine ecosystem services reaches16,859,600RMB, which is2.3times of what hasbeen anticipated. Meanwhile, the research result can also provide quantificationaltechnical support to the loss evaluation of ocean ecosystem caused by oil spill. It ishighly advisable that the evaluation model of ecological loss caused by oil in ourcountry should be perfected so as to avoid the senseless cost of national ecologicalcapital generated by similar accidents in the future.