Optimization of marine environmental monitoring sites in the Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent sea, China

Marine environment in the Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent sea is now facing more and more serious pollution from various sources. Based on the Seawater quality standard of China and the mean values of environmental elements of seawater from 1985 to 2006, Seawater Environmental Quality Index (SEQI) is proposed to characterize the marine environmental quality in this study. On this basis, kriging variance analysis method combining with GIS is applied in the optimization of marine monitoring network in order to get more accurate and abundant information of the marine environment. SEQI of 42 existing monitoring sites is extracted to describe the marine environmental quality of this area. Combining the average standard deviation of the monitoring network and the marine environmental quality, the number of monitoring sites is increased from 42 to 59 by kriging variance analysis method, which can improve the quality of marine environmental monitoring network. This study proposes an alternative optimization method for marine environmental monitoring and management. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.