Journal
FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Volume 12, Issue 5, Pages 267-272Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1890/130260
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Funding
- Australian Research Council - Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management [LP100200418]
- Commonwealth Department of the Environment
- Queensland Wader Study Group
- Port of Brisbane Pty Ltd.
- Birds Queensland
- CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship
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In the Yellow Sea region of East Asia, tidal wetlands are the frontline ecosystem protecting a coastal population of more than 60 million people from storms and sea-level rise. However, unprecedented coastal development has led to growing concern about the status of these ecosystems. We developed a remote-sensing method to assess change over similar to 4000 km of the Yellow Sea coastline and discovered extensive losses of the region's principal coastal ecosystem - tidal flats - associated with urban, industrial, and agricultural land reclamations. Our analysis revealed that 28% of tidal flats existing in the 1980s had disappeared by the late 2000s (1.2% annually). Moreover, reference to historical maps suggests that up to 65% of tidal flats were lost over the past five decades. With the region forecast to be a global hotspot of urban expansion, development of the Yellow Sea coastline should pursue a course that minimizes the loss of remaining coastal ecosystems.
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