AMethodforAssessingtheEco-environmentalVulnerability.docVIP

A Method for Assessing the Eco-environmental Vulnerability of Fildes Peninsula, Antarctica Xiaoping Pang (pxp@) 1 School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; 2.Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; Shanshan Tong ( sunnytong117@163.com) School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; Peilan Liu (peilan_liu@) School of Resource and Environmental Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; Abstract Global change and sustainable development have become a hot topic in the world today. Recent studies concerning the impact of the global change on Antarctic and the interaction between global change and Antarctic environment have covered different scales and different disciplines in China. However, it is extremely difficult to implement comprehensive researches on the Antarctic environment change issues due to the peculiar conditions in this region. The methodology which combines the multi-scale information is a desirable and effective way for the study on the global change and Antarctic reactions. Focused on ice-free areas along Antarctic coast, this research analyzes the factors that contribute to eco-environmental vulnerability in ice-free areas, and brings forward a new technical framework for eco-environmental vulnerability quantitative assessment based on GIS. The assessment results can serve as a valuable basis for administration department to protect the Fildes Peninsula from artificial destruction. The body of this paper begins with a description of the characteristic of eco-environment vulnerability in Fildes Peninsula, which is a typical ice-free area located in the northeast Antarctic and exemplifies the whole evaluation process. Based on the analysis of Fildes Peninsula’s vulnerability and the feasibility of field survey, ten factors, including eight causal indexes and two resulting indexes, are extracted to construct a cau