Assessing impacts of large-scale coastal land reclamation on marine environment on the coast of China

Coastal land reclamation increases at a high speed on the coast of China in the last few decades. It is estimated that nearly 65% of tidal flats around the Yellow Sea of China have been reclaimed. This study is to undertake a comprehensive study of the coastal land reclamation in China by analyzing the coverage area of index system and the determination method of weight. In order to undertake the comprehensive evaluation, a new assessment method is also developed by combining the analytic hierarchy process(AHP) with the Delphi method. The Multi Indexing model for assessing impacts of land reclamation project on marine environment has been established. The weight for multi indexes has been obtained based on the AHP and Delphi methods. The evaluation standard for assessing impacts of reclamation project on marine environment is also proposed. With these new standards, the newly developed model has been applied to undertake a case study for a large-scale land reclamation project at a coastal site of Caofeidian located in the center of Bohai Bay