An empirical analysis of dynamic changes in ecological sustainability and its relationship with urbanization in a coastal city: The case of Xiamen in China

Many coastal cities have undergone a surge of rapid industrialization and urbanization leading to severe eco-environmental issues. Thus, establishing a systematic and scientific ecological sustainability assessment framework and ecological governance system is crucially important for coastal zone to achieve sustainable development. This study used a modified emergy-ecological footprint approach and a set of ecological sustainability evaluation indicators to comprehensively evaluate the ecological sustainability from 2000 to 2017 of Xiamen, a typical coastal city in China. Its results show that Xiamen changed from having an ecological surplus in 2008 to an ecological deficit in 2009, indicating that its demand for resources began to exceed the ecosystem threshold value in 2009. Besides, the results of the ecological sustainability analysis indicate that the ecological sustainability of Xiamen was gradually weakening due to increasing pressure on ecosystem health. We also measured four aspects of Xiamen's urbanization level-demographic, economic, social and spatial-to investigate their relationship with ecological sustainability. These results indicate that, for Xiamen, demographic urbanization is the essential determinant of the urbanization system's correlation relationship with ecological sustainability and it thus is the key indicator to be considered when making policy to guarantee ecological balance and sustainable development. Additionally, the relationships between the four different aspects of urbanization and ecological sustainability are all an exhibit inverse U-shaped curve during the study period. Finally, effective measures were proposed in consideration of the research findings. The results hold profound significance for the Xiamen's sustainable development, as well as for other coastal zones with similar characteristics. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.