title: Economic development and coastal ecosystem change in China.
abstract: Despite their value, coastal ecosystems are globally threatened by anthropogenic impacts, yet how these impacts are driven by economic development is not well understood. We compiled a multifaceted dataset to quantify coastal trends and examine the role of economic growth in China's coastal degradation since the 1950s. Although China's coastal population growth did not change following the 1978 economic reforms, its coastal economy increased by orders of magnitude. All 15 coastal human impacts examined increased over time, especially after the reforms. Econometric analysis revealed positive relationships between most impacts and GDP across temporal and spatial scales, often lacking dropping thresholds. These relationships generally held when influences of population growth were addressed by analyzing per capita impacts, and when population density was included as explanatory variables. Historical trends in physical and biotic indicators showed that China's coastal ecosystems changed little or slowly between the 1950s and 1978, but have degraded at accelerated rates since 1978. Thus economic growth has been the cause of accelerating human damage to China's coastal ecosystems. China's GDP per capita remains very low. Without strict conservation efforts, continuing economic growth will further degrade China's coastal ecosystems.
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
authors.forename: Mark D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Bertness
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, CB #3280, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
authors.forename: John F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Bruno
authors.affiliation: Coastal Ecosystems Research Station of the Yangtze River Estuary, Institute of Biodiversity Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: 1] Division of Climate Change Thermodynamics and Systems Ecology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Institute of Environmental Economics and Policy Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Guoqian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
authors.forename: Tyler C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Coverdale
authors.affiliation: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Ancon, Republic of Panama.
authors.forename: Andrew H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Altieri
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Junhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA.
authors.forename: Steven C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Pennings
authors.affiliation: Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA.
authors.forename: Jianguo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Paul R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Ehrlich
authors.affiliation: School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Baoshan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cui
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049628:Body Size; D002681:China; D057217:Economic Development; D017753:Ecosystem; D005399:Fishes / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D011158:Population Growth
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