Recognizing the need and importance for the regional global
change community to study river-ocean interactions and environmental changes in
river basins and near-estuarine coastal zones of major rivers of the Northeast
Asia, and as a result of APN activity in the Russian Far East and, particularly, two APN and
START-funded workshops held in Vladivostok (2002, 2003), a proposal,
Climate
Variability and Human Activities in Relation to Northeast Asian Land-Ocean
Interactions and their Implications for Coastal Zone Management, was developed by Russian, Chinese
and Korean scientists to investigate and assess the effects of the natural climatic
variability and socio-economic development on environmental changes. The key questions to be
addressed are: (1) How are humans altering the mass balance of water, sediment,
nutrient and contaminant fluxes, and what are the consequences? (2) How do changes in land use,
climate and sea level alter fluxes and retention of water and particulate matter in
coastal zones, and affect the morphodynamics? (3) How can we apply knowledge of processes and
impacts of biogeochemical and socio-economic changes to improve integrated
coastal zone management? The 2-year APN-funded collaborative and
multidisciplinary project intends to answer these questions, alone with aims to improve
regional capacity building and to expand APN network.
Participants from the following countries were funded: P.R.
China, Republic of Korea and Russia.
Main objectives of the project are as follows:
to identify estuarine and coastal changes in terms of hydrology,
hydrochemistry, geochemistry, geomorphology, ecosystem and material cycling
patterns of the Northeastern Asia region, with special reference to the Amur,
Tumen and Razdolnaya ivers; to evaluate the sensitivity of regional changes in relation to
anthropogenic processes and climate change; to provide recommendations to management of sustainable coastal
development of the region and to provide assistance to policy/decision
makers.
One the main activities in 2004/2005 was collection, compilation
and collation of the existing data sets and literature reviews on the changes in
coastal and near-estuarine areas. Main results of the data analysis can be summarized as
follows:
- Climatic tendencies in the North East Asia and Northwest
Pacific;
- Climatic changes and river discharges;
- Seasonal and annual variability of the concentration and
output of nutrients by the Razdolnaya (Suyfun) River (Russia);
- Concentration of metals in the rivers of the southern part
of the Russian Far East;
- The state of coastal ecosystems in near-estuarine areas of
Razdolnaya (Suyfun) River (Russia);
- Long-term changes in the hydrological regime of the Amur
River.
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