Application of multiple ecological indicators in ecosystem health assessment: a case study of Tianjin Binhai New Area intertidal wetlands

The increasing different stress caused by human activities induced changes in Tianjin Binhai New Area intertidal wetlands recent years. To find out whether the ecosystem health status of the wetlands in this area has been changed correspondingly, data of macrobentho abundance and biomass of 20 stations, both in May and August 2007 were applied, and multiple ecological indicators of different levels including the thermodynamic indicators exergy and specific exergy, ABC curves, W-statistic based on the species biomass and abundance, and the biodiversity indicators Shannon-Wiener index and Margalef index were applied. Moreover, the correlations among these ecological indicators were analyzed. An attempt was also made to discuss the applicability and limitation of each ecological indicator in wetlands ecosystem health assessment. The results showed that: 1) With temporal change, most districts appeared better ecosystem health status in August than May; 2) In spatial scale, DGDC district and DST district presented the best ecosystem health status, followed by CJP district, DGYT district and CTG district successively from the aspect of holistic evaluation. In addition, the data in this study indicated that the specific exergy index was more sensitive to the physical disturbance than the other indicators.