Rapid Assessment For The Ecological Health Of Urban River, Harbin

There are fundamental differences between urban rivers and natural rivers. The urban river provides more functions than the natural one, such as water source, power, greenbelt, transportation, pollution discharge, recreation. Further, they can weaken hot island effect and flood disaster. Intensive urban economic activities disturb rivers, and damage health of ecosystems. Therefore, an effective assessment method for evaluating the damage degree of rives is required. However, few assessment studies on river health in China have been conducted due to lack of historical data. Which cause we neither can adapt a foreign assessment method, nor develop a native system based on local situation.Basing on international research results, this paper focused on the rivers across cities, and established a rapid assessment method which aimed to accelerate the urban-river health assessment of Harbin. With"advisory experts"and"analytic hierarchy process", we used ecological index and citizen utilization index. Reaches of rivers which cross Guxiang Park, Children's Garden, Daixiu Park and Binhe Culture Sculpture Park in Harbin have been assessed by this method. The main results are as follows:(1) The ecological conditions of all sits were serious. Rivers were dry, or water was static and contaminated. Watercourses which were covered by concrete have damaged the foundation of the river ecology health. It closely related to the traditional river management ideology. Riparian vegetation was fragmented, and its structure was too simple. It was ignored different functions of tree layer, shrub layer and herb layer respectively. The connection between terrestrial ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems has been cut off.(2) On index of the citizen utilization, there were sufficient spaces and facilities in riparian area of parks. However, that most of reaches were hard to approach, so people's requirements of closing water could not be satisfied. Except Binhe Culture Sculpture Park, there were not any historical cultural characteristics in other parks. Orientation panels and toilets in most of parks were lack, too.(3) Combined synthesizing ecological index and the citizen utilization index, reaches in all parks were not healthy. It was urgently needed restoration of the ecosystem. Restoration is urgent needed for the ecosystem.(4) Base on evaluation results, the mentioned rapid assessment method for urban river is suitable for Harbin. And it also provides a reference for other research.