Diagnostic model construction and example analysis of habitat degradation in enclosed bay: II. spatiotemporal variations in habitat degradation in Sansha Bay

The process of habitat degradation varies in habitat type and driving force which shows certain spatial and temporal heterogeneity on regional scales. In the present study, a new diagnostic model for enclosed bay habitat degradation was established, with which the spatial and temporal variation patterns of habitat degradation during 1991–2012 in Sansha Bay, Fujian, China was investigated. The results show that anthropogenic disturbance is the major controlling factor for the habitat degradation in large temporal heterogeneity in the bay. On the other hand, the habitat degradation experienced significant spatial variations among six sub-bays. Under the joint action of temporal and spatial heterogeneity, the degradation trend in growing scale shows a more significant correlation with the distribution of local leading industries along shorelines. Therefore, we quantified the main characters of habitat degradation in Sansha Bay, and have understood the relationship between the status of habitats spatio-temporal variation value and the main controlling factor leading to the changes. However, a deficiency of this research is the lack of or inaccessible to the detailed data, which shall be better solved in the future study for accessing more data from more sources.