Research on Cumulative Environmental Impact
Assessment on Integrated Marine Engineering of
Bohai Bay
Li Mingchang Si Qi
Laboratory of Environmental Protection in Water Transport
Engineering
Tianjin Research Institute of Water Transport Engineering
Tianjin, China
Email:lmcsq1997@163.com
Abstract—Certain environmental factor’s change leads to the
imbalance of marine environmental system. The engineering
cumulative impact wasn’t considered within the environmental
impact assessment, so the environmental impact results are not
completely. In this paper, an integrated cumulative impact
analysis and assessment of hydrodynamic and water environment
by the great marine engineering of Hebei and Tianjin in the
Bohai Bay is implemented. The assessment results show that the
cumulative impact of great marine engineering is not ignored.
Keywords-marine engineering; marine environment; cumulative
impact; assessment
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, along with the fast development of our
country’s economy, surround reclamation way of marine
engineering such as ports are constantly emerging, that great
influence by marine engineering for the offshore marine water
environment is not ignored. The influence of Tianjin offshore
waters, for example, exists in the different degree of
eutrophication. Inorganic nitrogen and active phosphate
pollution is superior to the standard heavily, the area did not
reach the grade of clean seawater as 88.3%.
Marine environment system is a full of uncertainty of an
organic one, once some one factor has been influenced from
external in great disturbance, it will lead to the indirect
changes of other factors, thus causing the whole system
imbalance. Current environmental impact assessment and sea
area use argument of construction projects was not correct
understand the cumulative impact, so that the evaluation fails
to fully reflect the environmental impact of project. Therefore,
research on the “accumulated” in temporal and “synergy” on
spatial cumulative environmental impact is sharply realistic
significant for the ecological and environmental protection.
Cumulative environmental impact assessment has been
researched abroad earlier [1-2], some domestic scholars began
related research work also [3-4]. Although so many research
methods were studied, for the application research of practical
project the research is rarely and unilateral.
The present paper aims to develop a more practical
technique for cumulative environmental impact assessment of
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Liang Shuxiu Sun Zhaochen
State Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering
Dalian University of technology
Dalian, China
great integrated marine engineering. In this technique, a
synthetic evaluated method named nonlinear set pair method is
presented [5]. MIKE 21 is employed to simulate the marine
water quality in interested area.
The structure of this paper is as follows. In section 2, the
cumulative impact on hydrodynamics is computed and
analyzed. In section 3, the cumulative impact on environment
is evaluated and analyzed. In section 4, conclusions are made.
II. CUMULATIVE IMPACT ON HYDRODYNAMICS
A. Brief Introduction of Bohai Bay
Case testes are carried out with a real ocean bay named
Bohai Bay, west part of Bohai Sea, China. The total area is
about 15,900 km2. It is very shallow and its averaged water
depth is less than 20m. The sea bottom is very flat and its
mean slope is less than 2‰. The tide hydrodynamic is
controlled by the tidal waves of the Bohai Sea, so the tidal
current is complicated.
B. Coastaline Variation of Bohai Bay
Since the 20th century, rapid development of national
economy, especially in the coastal area, leads to a large
number of ports. Construction method is mostly reclamation
forms, which caused the shoreline change sharply. Large-scale
reclamation engineering of Tianjin, Caofeidian harbor and
Huanghua harbor in Bohai bay etc causes great changes of the
Bohai Bay’s coastline, artificial shoreline rate increase year
after year to climb.
Figure 1 is a variation of bohai bay’s coastline, including
the coastline of Bohai Bay in the 1980s as a and b for 2007.
The compare between a and b, the coastline of 2007 has
caused a great change, at the same time this series of projects
is constantly expanding in Bohai Bay, the coastline has a great
changes annually.
C. Hydrodynamics Variation of Bohai Bay
1) Numerical Model
A hydrodynamic model named MIKE21 FW is employed
for simulating the current field changes in this paper and
triangle mesh technique is applied for close to complex its south and north of Tianjin port clockwise circulation has
coastline. There is only one open boundary line controlled by formed, a counterclockwise circulation formed in south of
two open boundary control point, which coordinate are (118.5°, Tianjin port. The characteristic of counterclockwise coastal
39.1241°) and (118.5°, 38.1093°). current does not exist.
2) Residual Current Field Variation
Residual current direction is often sediment movement and
pollution diffusion migration direction. Residual current
analysis is an effective method for the coastal sediment
movement source study and environmental protection
research. Euler residual current [6] is adopted in this paper,
K 1 K
U ( x0 , t ) dt , in which n is tidal cycles number.
nT t³0
UE =

b
Fig. 2 Variation of residual current field

III. CUMULATIVE IMPACT ON MARINE ENVIRONMENT

A. Comparison of Marine Environment

Dissolved oxygen is one of the important indexes of sea
water quality, in this paper it is selected to analyze the ocean
water environmental changes in 1980s and 2007.
Figure 3 is dissolved oxygen distribution, including 1980s
(a) and 2007 (b). Through the compare a with b, the dissolved
b
oxygen content in 2007 is relatively lower for 1980s.

Fig. 1 Variation of Bohai Bay coastline

Figure 2 is residual current field of 1980s (a) and 2007 (b).

Multiple major marine engineering causes coastline changes,
not only leads directly to northwest clockwise circulation
towards west development, the field is more complex, but also
in its west a new counterclockwise circulation has formed, in

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 engineering for the marine environment cumulative effects
cannot be ignored.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by National Nonprofit Institute
Research Grant of TIWTE (TKS090204, TKS100217).
REFERENCES
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b
Fig. 3 Distribution of DO

B. Marine Environment Assessment

A new method named nonlinear membership function set
pair analysis method [5] is applied for evaluating sea water
environment quality in this paper, this assessment method has
the advantages of simple and easy operation, and nonlinear
membership function can describe evaluation index level
attribution degree. So evaluation result has higher reliability.
By using nonlinear membership functions of set pair analysis
method, evaluation result showed the water quality in 2007 is
still less than 1980s, owing to the total amount great integrated
marine engineering alongshore, which caused a tremendous
coastline changes, weakened residual current and water
exchange capacity.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, cumulative environment impact is analyzed by
hydrodynamics and water environment in Bohai Bay.
“Synergy” and “accumulated” theory is integrated in the
research. The nonlinear membership function set pair analysis
method is presented to evaluate the water environmental
quality. The result shows that the major integrated marine

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