Panjin Red Beach Wetland Protection and Sustainable Development Forum is Held

Release Time:2021-10-09 Big Small

From September 15 to16, 2021, the Red Beach Wetland Protection and Sustainable Development Forum was successfully held in Panjin. The forum was jointly organised by the Cultural Tourism Group of Panjin City, the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and several other organisations. 

The Red Beach Wetland in Panjin City, formed mainly by the Suaeda heteroptera community in the estuary area, is a unique natural scenery and a very important ecological and tourism resource. Since 2015, however, the Red Beach Wetland has been seriously degraded. As the total wetland area and the biomass per unit area have greatly reduced, a wide range of bare areas appear. 

In view of this, in 2018, the leaders of the Panjin Municipal Government and Party Committee requested urgent technical support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In accordance with the instructions of CAS President Bai Chunli, many of the CAS institutes conducted on-site investigations in Panjin. In the end, the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) got the opportunity to lead the ecological conservation project. 

Since August 2018, the research team from IAE have been working closely with the Cultural Tourism Group of Panjin City, Dalian Ocean University and the National Oceanic Monitoring Center to explore the causes of the Red Beach degradation. In the spring of 2019, several small-scale experiments were set up to rehabilitate the degraded wetland in the National Red Beach Wetland Scenic Corridor. In 2020 and 2021, the medium-scale experiments and the large-scale engineering rehabilitation measures were carried out, respectively. As a result of these measures, the area of the Red Beach Wetland has increased by more than 10 times compared with 2018. 

It has been proved that the restoration of the Red Beach Wetland is very complex, and must be carried out scientifically and systematically by using different measures (e.g., the regulation of salinity, water storage and soil nutritions) so that the ecological balance can be achieved. 

Through academic discussions, the attendees at the forum summarised the research and practice on the Red Beach Wetland. The holding of this forum is of great significance for the Red Beach Wetland to become a landmark in ecological restoration. Guo Shuhai, head of the project team, gave a talk entitled "Liaohekou Red Beach Wetland Degradation and Ecological Restoration" at the forum. Li Fengmei, Cheng Fenglian, principal investigators of the project, and some others gave talks, too. The leaders of IAE also attended the forum.