Project Title: Urban Wetland Ecology and Service

Project Type: “Oversea High-level Talents Project” by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Project Awardee: Yu Shen

Project Abstract: China has made an incredible progress in urbanization in the past three decades, which was achieved in western countries over a century. In 2008, the urban dwellers reached 45.7% of Chinese population, especially the population of suburban towns grew rapidly. The suburban towns, increased from 2173 in 1978 to 19249 in 2007, usually don’t have an environmental-friendly planning and are lacking environmental protection facilities, like sanitary and waste treatment facilities. Increasing impervious coverage by urbanization strongly fragmentizes natural ecosystems and weakens natural ecosystem services. Organic and inorganic pollutants derive from urban areas and are enriched in urban areas and surroundings because of the shrinkage of natural ecosystems and degradation of their services. Wetlands or lowlands in/surrounding the suburban towns and municipal cities serve as a sink of inorganic and organic urban-derived pollutants via rain surface runoffs and direct atmospheric deposition. Therefore, environmental quality of urban wetlands, to some extent, might indicate degradation status of environment quality of suburban towns and municipal cities. On the other side, wetland ecosystem is an important natural bio-reactor to process all kinds of organic and inorganic pollutants. This project emphasizes on a) relationships between urban wetland environmental quality (surface water and sediments) and urbanization level or process; b) contributions of contaminants in wetlands from urban regions under various urbanization levels (different cities and functional districts); c) degradation mechanisms of surface water in wetlands by urban-derived rain surface runoffs; d) biogeochemistry of urban-derived contaminants, including nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, and organic compounds, in urban wetland ecosystems.

Period of Project: 2008.3 – 2012.12

Fund of Project: 2,000,000 RMB