Marine coastal ecosystem health assessment: a case study of the Tolo Harbour, Hong Kong, China

Procedures for assessing a marine coastal ecosystem health are presented in this paper. The assessment includes the following five steps: (1) review of human activities; (2) identification of human-induced stresses; (3) analysis of ecosystem responses to the stresses; (4) development of ecosystem health indicators; and (5) assessment of ecosystem health. A set of comprehensive indicators integrating classical indicators with thermodynamic indicators was proposed and applied to assess the Tolo Harbour marine coastal ecosystem health. The indicators encompass the stress indicators and the responses indicators including physical, chemical, biological, general ecosystem-level and ecosystem-service-function aspects. The assessment results of the Tolo Harbour ecosystem health show that a temporal order of ecosystem health state from good to bad is determined as follows: the 1970s > the 1990s > the 1980s; while, a spatial order of health state from good to bad is Channel Subzone > Buffer Subzone > Harbour Subzone. Some recommendations to improve further the marine coastal ecosystem health in the Tolo Harbour are finally discussed in the paper. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.