Modeling the Total Allowable Area for Coastal Reclamation : a case study of Xiamen, China

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ocean & Coastal Management 76 (2013):38-44, doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2013.02.015.This paper presents an analytical framework to estimate the Total Allowable Area for Coastal Reclamation (TAACR) to provide scientific support for the implementation of a coastal reclamation restriction mechanism. The logic of the framework is to maximize the net benefits of coastal reclamation subject to a set of constraints. Various benefits and costs, including the ecological and environmental costs of coastal reclamation, are systematically quantified in the framework. Model simulations are developed using data from Tongan Bay of Xiamen. The results suggest that the TAACR in Tongan Bay is 5.67 km2, and the area of the Bay should be maintained at least at 87.52 km2.The study was funded by the National Oceanic Public Welfare Projects (No. 201105006) and the Fujian Natural Science Foundation (No. 2010J01360

From support to pressure: The dynamics of social and governmental influences on environmental law enforcement in Guangzhou City, China

This paper examines how changes in governmental and social influences affect environmental enforcement in Guangzhou city, China, between 2000 and 2006. The paper finds that a form of “decentered regulation” has developed. Regulatory enforcement is no longer the sole affair of the government and the regulatory bureaucracy, but has been increasingly influenced by societal forces. The transformation over time shows the promises and limits of decentered regulation in Guangzhou's dynamic authoritarian setting. Analyzing a set of longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews, the paper finds that by 2006, the rise of civil society and its increased support for protecting the environment had a double-edged impact on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, by 2006, when government support for enforcement was low, societal forces developed an ability to counterbalance such lack of governmental support and positively influence enforcement. However, it also shows that when government support was high, a concurrent rise in societal support created a negative effect on enforcement. Thus too much societal support can become an enforcement burden

Improving optimization efficiency for the total pollutant load allocation in large two-dimensional water areas: Bohai Sea (China) case study

The total pollutant load allocation (TPLA) can be transformed into an optimization problem with regards to water quality constraints. The optimization calculation may become very time consuming when the number of water quality constraint equations is great. A Trial and Error Method (TEM) to remove the redundant points was first introduced through iterative calculations under structure and non-structure model grids. The TEM was applied for the TPLA in the Bohai Sea in China. The calculation time was reduced to about 2 min under the condition that 103,433 model grids met the water quality standards. In the best case, the optimization efficiency was improved by 98.9%. The allocation results showed that approximately 90% of total nitrogen (TN) load should be reduced in the 56 pollution sources around the Bohai Sea; of these values, roughly 85% of the reduction could come from 10 pollution sources