A model to assess fundamental and realized carrying capacities of island ecosystem: A case study in the southern Miaodao Archipelago of China

Research on carrying capacity, aiming at maintaining the limited ability of the Earth’s life supporting system to sustain human development, requires a comprehensive and ecosystem-based approach to monitor and assess the localized sustainability of coupled social and ecological systems. A definition termed the ecosystem-based carrying capacity of island (EBCCI) was developed in this paper of which the indices of fundamental and realized carrying capacities of island (FCCI and RCCI) were highlighted to emphasize the inter-dependencies between social systems and ecological systems. In order to avoid the difficulties and uncertainties of direct assessment, the related assessment model was established on the basis of synthetic evaluation of inherent and external factors affecting the EBCCI. The southern Miaodao Archipelago (SMA) located in the intersection of the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea, China, was taken as a typical example to acquire integrated recognition of the island ecosystem and its carrying capacity so as to discuss its sustainable development. The index scores of FCCI and RCCI in the SMA were 0.818 5 and 0.712 9 out of 1.0, respectively, with acceptable uncertainties. The results showed a relatively well capacity to sustain progress and relatively well realization of the carrying capacity of island ecosystem, owing to a well capacity of ecologically regulating, general performance of both ecologically supporting and resource provisioning, and a relatively high level of social supporting system. The study implied that it was critical to optimize the inter-dependencies and to sustain the relative balance between social systems and ecological systems so as to improve the RCCI and further facilitate the sustainability of SMA. The approach proposed in this paper provides a powerful tool which is well applicative to the regional level of an oceanic island or archipelago to study the sustainable development and can be further popularized to the coastal zone.