Assessment of Coastal Zone Vulnerability in the Context of Sea Level Rise and Climate Change

Abstract

The coastal zone is the most frequent and active area where nature and human society interact with each other on the Earth. However, the coastal zone is also an area with fragile environment and frequent disasters. Coupled with the high-intensity human activities, disaster prevention and environmental protection in the coastal zone have become eternal topics. At the same time, the trend of sea level rise and climate change is currently difficult to curb, and its impact on coastal areas cannot be ignored, and a scientific assessment of the vulnerability of coastal zones caused by them is required. Based on multi-source data, this paper constructs a coastal zone vulnerability evaluation system from two sources of ecological vulnerability, sea level rise and climate change, and reveals the impact of sea level rise and climate change on coastal zone ecosystems, providing technical support for the sustainable development of coastal cities. From the results, it can be seen that the mildly vulnerable area and slightly vulnerable area in the Jiangsu coastal zone are relatively large, accounting for 34.06 and 30.43% of the total area of the evaluation area, followed by moderately vulnerable area and highly vulnerable area accounting for 21.11 and 11.17%, respectively, and the extremely vulnerable area is the smallest, accounting for only 3.23% of the total area.