(Photo provided to Xinhua Daily)
The Yangtze River Delta Demonstration Station has become one of China’s two Pilot Sites for GlobalCoast, according to the CoastPredict General Assembly held in Barcelona on April 9.
The meeting announced 124 Pilot Sites for GlobalCoast across 64 countries following a survey conducted from July to October 2023. The ocean, occupying 71% of the Earth's surface, faces daunting challenges, including the deterioration of the marine environment, biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, and issues complicated by climate change.
The Yangtze River Delta Station was initiated by a team led by Professor Yuan Linwang and Professor Yu Zhaoyuan at Nanjing Normal University, and co-developed by Nanjing University and Ningbo University.
Located at the junction of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, the site includes the wetlands in Yancheng City and features unique natural landscapes such as the radial tidal sand ridge in the south Yellow Sea, making it an ideal place for studying land-sea interactions and environmental dynamics. Additionally, the area’s complex meteorological and oceanic phenomena, such as continental shelf waves and boundary currents, also facilitate scientific research.
Professor Yuan stated that the pilot site will become an important node and information infrastructure for GlobalCoast, which will use integrated methodologies to improve forecasting and projection skills for global ocean observing system, coastal observing system, and for extreme events and hazards.
The pilot site will contribute globally relocatable and replicable solutions, jointly formulate standards and norms related to information infrastructure and sharing, support sustainable development, and promote international cooperation in coastal management and scientific research, he added.
As CoastPredict’s Global Coastal Ocean Experiment, GlobalCoast aims to improve the understanding and prediction of coastal marine ecosystems, services and biodiversity by observing natural and human-induced changes in coastal areas and by integrating Big Data, modelling and artificial intelligence techniques.
