Long-Time-Series Evolution and Ecological Effects of Coastline Length in Coastal Zone: A Case Study of the Circum-Bohai Coastal Zone, China

Shisi Tang, Laixi Song, Shiqi Wan, Yafei Wang, Yazhen Jiang () and Jinfeng Liao
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Shisi Tang: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Laixi Song: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Shiqi Wan: School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Yafei Wang: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Yazhen Jiang: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Jinfeng Liao: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-19

Abstract: Under the joint influence of climate change and human production and living activities on land and sea, the morphology and use function of the coastline have undergone notable changes, triggering more significant environmental and ecological effects. In this paper, we quantified the evolution characteristics of the coastline over the past 30 years and measured the possible environmental pollution and ecological degradation by means of spatiotemporal coupling analysis in terms of spatial form and land-use function. The Chinese Bohai Rim region was taken as an example, and the Google Earth Engine was applied to achieve a long time series of interannually continuous land use function classification of the coastal zone. The study shows that: (1) from 1987–2020, the coastline of Bohai Rim showed an overall trend of seaward expansion, with the length of the coastline increasing by 15.6%, most significantly from 2003 to 2011; (2) the proportion of construction function coastline increased from 14.66% to 42.8%, while the proportion of cropland coastline decreased from 52.01% to 18.16% during 2000–2020, with the natural ecological coastline decreasing in the early stage and recovering in the later stage, thus becoming more stable overall; (3) 82.73% of coastal districts and counties showed a linear correlation between changes in coastline function and water quality level, and 77.8% showed a consistent degree of change of coastline function and loss of ecological land, indicating that changes in the coastline have triggered significant problems in terms of environmental pollution and ecological degradation. With the exception of localized areas such as the Yellow River Delta, where coastline change is somewhat more significantly influenced by environmental climate change, most other coastline changes are primarily due to human land-based development; therefore, coastal policy constraints bring obvious mitigation.

Keywords: coastline; use function changes; long time series; land use function classification; environmental and ecological effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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