Impact of Human Activities on Coastal Wetlands in China

Coastal wetland contains abundant natural resources and is important to the environment and ecology.It can store water or reduce the ocean current and also be a good supply of ground water.It can detain the nutrients,remove or transform the harmful elements.It is a huge gene bank for us. But coastal wetland is a vulnerable and sensitive ecological area that human being must get on well with.China has a long coast from north to south.Now,Chinese coastal wetlands have been impaired seriously due to the pressure of population growth,and the economic and industry develops.To obtain a large amount of production and subsistence,human beings have brought some negative impacts on coastal wetland when we exploited the resources of the coastal wetland.Then,the functions of the coastal wetland have been decreased.The main threats for the coastal wetlands are as following: ①the exploration of the oil creates the oil pollution;②the vegetation degeneration;③ the losing of animal inhabited area;④the overuse of biological wetland resources;⑤ human beings and industrial waste dumping and destruction of habitat during development;⑥ the exploration of the tropics coastal wetland.Now,some progresses in study and protection of Chinese coastal wetland have been made,and some achievements in wetland resource investigation and technical means have been made.On the whole,the study level of coastal wetland and the study about human activities are poor.The impact of human activities on the coastal wetland from below aspects was discussed in the paper.They are exploration of the oil,construction of water conservancy facility,wetland development,agricultural pollution,highway construction,the exploration of mangrove forest and coral reef.How seriously the wetland had been impaired by the human activities was shown in the paper.Furthermore, some suggestions and countermeasures for protection of coastal wetlands were pointed out in the paper: ①to classify the coastal wetland resources;②to develop the coastal wetland resources effectively;③to establish the demonstration sites for protecting the coastal wetland;④to reduce the pollution from agriculture and industry;⑤to increase the public awareness of protecting coastal wetland;⑥ to strengthen the scientific research and enhance the international cooperation;⑦to strengthen the legislative work to insure the management and the protection of the coastal wetland.