Taiwan’s western coastal floodplains have shrunk by 58 percent from the 1950s to the 2010s, a steep decline that threatens wetland ecology and migratory birds, the Endemic Species Research Institute said in a study.
The losses are the result of reclamation and construction projects for dams, reservoirs, harbors, airports, farms and aquafarms, the Ministry of Agriculture-run institute said in a news release.
Although halted in the past few years, the decline spells trouble for the environment, as shellfish-rich floodplains are essential to sustain species that rely on wetlands, including migratory birds, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Endemic Species Research Institute
Compromising the wetlands would be a devastating blow to migratory waterfowl populations that use it as a way station during their sojourn between East Asia and Australasia, the institute said.
Changhua County’s Hanbao (漢寶), Fangyuan (芳苑) and Dacheng (大城) townships are the only wetlands remaining that have fully intact floodplains, it said.
The study, “Losing tidal flats at the midpoint of the East Asian-Australasian flyway over the past 100 years,” was published in the journal Wetlands on May 22. It used topographic maps and Landsat Archive images from the 1920s to the 2020s to determine the trajectories of tidal flat change on Taiwan’s coasts.
Asia has lost the most floodplain area in the world due to rapid industrialization over the past century, said Lin Ruey-shing (林瑞興), an institute researcher and a coauthor of the paper.
The government must exercise more care in coastal land utilization following global biodiversity guidelines, Lin said, adding that the green energy initiative has been harmful to floodplains.
For example, the government zoned part of Changhua’s wetlands as industrial areas, allowing solar panels to be installed in floodplains, he said.
Officials are debating whether to include the effects on ecology as a metric in environmental impact assessments for permits to build renewable energy infrastructure, he said.
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