Spatiotemporal changes caused by the intensive use of sea areas in the liaoning coastal economic zone of China

• Published in: PloS one 2020-11, Vol.15 (11), p.e0242977
• Main Authors: Ke, Lina, Yin, Shusheng, Wang, Shuting, Wang, Quanming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biology and Life Sciences; China - epidemiology; Cities; Cluster analysis; Coastal zone; Coasts; Conservation of Natural Resources - economics; Decision analysis; Decision theory; Earth Sciences; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Economic aspects; Economic zones (Law of the sea); Economics; Ecosystem; Environmental aspects; Environmental Monitoring - economics; Exploitation; Fuzzy set theory; Fuzzy sets; Geography; Humans; Marine ecology; Marine resources; Oceans; Oceans and Seas; Research methodology; Social Sciences; Supply & demand; Sustainability; Sustainable development; Sustainable Development - economics; Utilization
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242977

Oceans and their resources are experiencing immense pressure because of human exploitation. The intensive use of sea areas has become an important method in solving the contradiction between ocean supply and demand, thereby ensuring sustainable marine economy development, tapping potential sea-area utilization, reasonably allocating sea-area utilization structures, and increasing marine economic benefits. This paper explores the definition and connotation of intensive sea-area use and constructs an evaluation index system based on marine input intensity, marine utilization structure, marine economic benefit, and marine ecological environment. Multi-objective variable fuzzy set theory and fuzzy decision analysis methods were used to evaluate the intensive sea-area utilization in the Liaoning Coastal Economic Zone of China during 2004-2016. The spatial differentiation characteristics of intensive sea-area use were analysed using cluster analysis. The research result showed that: (1) Intensive utilization level of the Liaoning coastal economic zone has gradually increased, while it is still in a moderately weak level; (2) Sea area intensive utilization varied in degrees and fluctuates in the six cities under the jurisdiction of the Liaoning coastal economic zone; and (3) Marine input intensity, marine utilization structure, marine economic benefit, and marine sustainability indexes have increased in the cities, thereby exhibiting improvements in the Liaoning coastal economic zone.