In response to the problems of highly intensive land use and fragmentation faced by China's coastal wetlands, led by Prof. Cui Lijuan, the research team from the Institute of Ecological Protection and Restoration, Chinese Academy of Forestry, focuses on the research of China’s coastal tidal wetlands, and with seventeen years’ joint work through industry-university-research institute collaboration model, they proposed a large-scale, long-term tidal flat information extraction method that eliminates the influence of tidal water levels. The accuracy of this method can reach up to 90%; compared with the traditional methods, the cost of this proposed method is 70% lower, but 5% higher accuracy than similar technologies. The first tidal flat wetland restoration technology based on "ecological units" was proposed, a breakthrough in the development of degradable bionic components for regulating water and salt, which have increased the species of shorebirds in the restoration area and surrounding areas by 68%. The research team discovered the "clustering" effect of denitrifying bacteria under low temperature conditions in the tidal wetland, screened out salt-tolerant rhizosphere denitrifying strains, and utilized ratoons by raising the water level-- rhizosphere microbial synergy, to achieve low-temperature purification. The team also developed a comprehensive wetland purification system that intercepts multi-target pollutants in situ, to improve the seawater quality from worse than Class V to Class IV~III.
20 authorized patents have obtained by the team, including 2 international invention patents, and the team have published 86 high-level papers, including 39 SCI papers, and registered 3 software copyrights.
The relevant technologies developed by the project have been widely promoted and applied in coastal areas of East China and South China such as Yancheng in Jiangsu province, Chongming Dongtan in Shanghai, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The cumulative demonstration area reached 50,000 mu (8237 acres), with a total radiation area of 100,000 mu (16474 acres). Dissemination activities have been carried out for more than 2.2 million people. It provides habitat for more than 1 million waterbirds along the coast.
Characterization of the entire process of nitrogen transformation in tidal wetlands (identifying the key processes of denitrification)
The "clustering" effect of denitrifying bacteria in tidal wetlands under low temperature conditions
