Impacts of tidal land reclamation in Bohai Bay, China: ongoing losses of critical Yellow Sea waterbird staging and wintering sites

Yang, Haitao; Chen, Bing; Barter, Mark; Piersma, Theunis; Zhou, Chunfa; Li, Fengshan; Zhang, Zhengwang

doi:10.1017/s0959270911000086

Cited by 150 publications

(155 citation statements)

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“…The massive port developments at Tianjin and Caofeidian, Hebei (the latter with an area of 31 000 ha being one of the largest land claim projects in the world) have received much international attention (Yang et al 2011), but what is not generally recognised is that probably every county-level administration along the Yellow Sea coast is also actively developing port facilities, or at least has plans to do so. Such development, which in many cases is happening very rapidly (Fig.…”

Section: Development Of Portsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, as intertidal areas become smaller as a result of land claim and birds become more concentrated in the remaining areas (Yang et al 2011) there is a growing potential for transmission of disease (Krauss et al 2010;Honkavuori et al 2014).…”

Section: Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current loss of intertidal habitats has resulted in increasing concentrations of birds at the remaining sites (Yang et al 2011) and is thought to be already adversely affecting shorebird populations (Conklin et al 2016;Piersma et al 2016). Significant further loss of habitat are already included in provincial development plans, but not all have yet been approved by the State Council (see above).…”

Section: A Future For Shorebirds On China's Yellow Sea Coast?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite major changes to many coastal areas surveyed by Mark Barter (Yang et al 2011), and reported declines in many shorebird populations within the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (Amano et al 2010;Rogers et al 2011;Wilson et al 2011;MacKinnon et al 2012;Australian Government 2015aChoi et al 2015;Hansen et al 2015), current surveys by Fudan University (Y. Chen, unpublished data) and the China Coastal Waterbird Census team (Bai et al 2015;Hua et al 2015) show that almost the entire soft shore of China's Yellow Sea coast meets Ramsar listing criteria as either staging sites, wintering grounds or breeding grounds, this being reflected in current proposals for designating 'red lines' (L. Zhang et al, unpubl. data).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shorebirds along the Yellow Sea coast of China face an uncertain future—a review of threats

Melville

Chen

2016

Emu - Austral Ornithology

108

107

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Abstract. Wetlands along the Yellow Sea coast of China, which are a major staging area for shorebirds in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, are in a state of crisis that threatens the future of this migration system. Populations of many shorebirds in the Flyway have declined in recent decades at a time when there has been widespread loss of habitat and degradation of coastal wetlands around the Yellow Sea. Here we examine current threats to coastal wetlands along China's Yellow Sea coast based on field surveys in 2013 and 2014 and a review of the literature. Intertidal habitats have been lost to land claim or degraded through aquaculture and harvesting, as well as gross pollution and invasion of exotic Spartina, all of which have negatively affected shorebird foraging, roosting and breeding sites. Planned further development, if unchecked, will result in the loss of most of the remaining intertidal area, which is likely to result in calamitous declines in populations of many shorebirds. There is a need for immediate action to curb future land claim and to develop an integrated coastal management strategy. Further research on applied aspects of shorebird ecology is urgently needed to inform future policy development and decision making.

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Section: Development Of Portsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Future For Shorebirds On China's Yellow Sea Coast?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Shorebirds along the Yellow Sea coast of China face an uncertain future—a review of threats

Melville

Chen

2016

Emu - Austral Ornithology

108

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is partly because great knots prefer to fly shorter distances than bar-tailed godwits (Fig. 5.1) and are dependent on stopover sites to complete both their northward and southward migration (Yang et al, 2011;Ma et al, 2013;Choi et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Threats to migratory birds, and actions for their conservation

Dhanjal‐Adams¹

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Migratory species undertake some of the most extreme feats of endurance known in the animal kingdom. Despite many species migrating across continents, oceans and hemispheres, most cannot survive everywhere. Migrants are highly dependent on strategically located breeding and feeding sites for survival and reproduction. Indeed, many species are constrained in time and space by seasonal resource availability, thus forming migratory bottlenecks. Threats operating in such bottlenecks can impact the population as a whole, and can impact survival and reproduction at later migratory stages. In fact, migratory species worldwide are declining at greater rates than non-migratory species. Many migratory species are at risk of extinction if no conservation action is taken.Pinpointing where and when threats occur, and understanding how they impact population dynamics of migratory species is complex. Few tools are available for diagnosing declines, and even fewer for prioritising conservation actions in migratory species. As a result, our understanding of how to conserve migratory species is remarkably poor. In my thesis, I tackle these fundamental gaps in our knowledge by 1) developing and testing a method to distinguish local from remote drivers of population growth rate in migratory species, 2) mapping critical habitat, and 3) prioritising conservation actions at local and international scales. I use the migratory shorebirds of the East-Asian Australasian Flyway as a case study. The East-Asian Australasian Flyway supports 60 species migrating across 23 political jurisdictions, many of which are in significant decline.In Chapter 1, I introduce my thesis by outlining key topics surrounding the conservation of migrants, linking them to my case study. In Chapter 2, I distinguish between local and remote drivers of population growth in migrants, using (i) count data from a single site within a migratory flyway, and (ii) a list of potential stopover sites. Indeed, for migratory species with large distributions, count data, mark-recapture studies or tagging records from across the entire geographic distribution are rare. Monitoring data are typically only available for one or a few sites. Newly available remote sensing data offer an opportunity to investigate how conditions in other parts of migratory cycle affect population growth rate at a monitored site. Analysing count data from Moreton Bay, Australia, I show that it is possible to identify effects of climatic conditions throughout the flyway on the population growth rate of migratory shorebirds as measured at a non-breeding site. My results also show that declines are occurring consistently 3 across all study species, but that there are some clear differences in temperature and rainfall impacts on population growth rate.Information about the distribution and status of habitat is crucial when devising conservation plans for migratory species, yet very little is known about the distribution, extent and protection of the intertidal habitats used by migratory shorebirds. ...

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Dynamics governing the response of tidal current along the mouth of Jiaozhou Bay to land reclamation

et al. 2015

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Data collected from the previous studies show that the tidal current along the mouth of Jiaozhou Bay (JZB) appears to have weakened, whereas the spatial asymmetry (stronger flooding in the north region and stronger ebbing in the south region) has remained nearly unchanged during the past several decades of large-scale land reclamation. This study is conducted to explain the underlying dynamics for this phenomenon. The analytic evaluation of the tidal motion indicates that the tidal current in a small coastal bay such as the JZB is linearly proportional to its length (L), if L is far less than one-quarter of the tidal wave length. This relation suggests that the decrease in tidal current speed in JZB mouth results from the land reclamation within the Bay. Also, the relationship between bay areas and tidal current along the JZB mouth can be derived. The results of this simple theoretical method for predicting the change in mean tidal current amplitude after the land reclamation largely agree with previous three-dimensional (3-D) modeling studies. It is also found that the spatial asymmetry of the tidal current along the JZB mouth is controlled by the sharp headland (the local factor). The unchanged shoreline around the headland leads to the stable spatial asymmetry of the tidal current. The weaker tidal current can explain the weaker residual current, and the unchanged asymmetry of the tidal current explains the unaltered pattern of inflow over the north region and outflow over the south region for the tidally induced residual current along the JZB mouth.

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Impacts of tidal land reclamation in Bohai Bay, China: ongoing losses of critical Yellow Sea waterbird staging and wintering sites

Cited by 150 publications

References 20 publications

Shorebirds along the Yellow Sea coast of China face an uncertain future—a review of threats

Shorebirds along the Yellow Sea coast of China face an uncertain future—a review of threats

Threats to migratory birds, and actions for their conservation

Dynamics governing the response of tidal current along the mouth of Jiaozhou Bay to land reclamation

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