Zoning of Hangzhou Bay ecological red line using GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis

Rapid economic development has led to increasing threats to the environmental security and regional sustainable development of coastal areas. Existing management plans, such as marine functional zoning do not meet their intended goals that balancing conservation and development. The new concept of an ecological red line (ERL) has a key role in the maintenance of national and regional ecological security, economic and social sustainable development and safeguarding of human health. In this paper, multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was conducted in combination with Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques for Hangzhou Bay ecological red line (HBERL) zoning. According to the two-level objectives, the ecological functional importance, ecological environmental sensitivity and environmental disaster risk were assessed with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) weighting method. Then, three maps were overlaid to obtain ERL zones under three scenarios. Finally, intersection analysis was performed. The overlapping portion was divided into the first level management and control zone of the HBERL, and the other portion was the second level zone. In this paper, a scientific and sound zoning approach with practical feasibility is proposed and applied to HBERL zoning. The pilot process works well, as demonstrated by the final map, in which the management and control zones are acceptable. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.