Ecological-economic assessment of monoculture and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture in Sanggou Bay of China

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• 作者：Honghua Shi ; Wei Zheng ; Xuelei Zhang ; Mingyuan Zhu ; Dewen Ding
• 关键词：Monoculture ; IMTA ; Emergy analysis ; Cost&ndash ; benefit analysis ; Sustainability ; Sanggou Bay
• 刊名：Aquaculture
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：10 October, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：410-411
• 期：Complete
• 页码：172-178
• 全文大小：637 K

文摘

As an approach designed to mitigate the ecological effects of monoculture, integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) is attracting increasing interests among researchers and commercial growers worldwide. However, sufficient quantitative assessment of IMTA is still lacking for decision makers, ecosystem managers and farmers to promote the application of IMTA in open-water systems. In this study, we investigated three types of culture models in Sanggou Bay, China, which were the monoculture of kelps, the monoculture of scallops, and the polyculture of kelps and scallops (IMTA), in order to compare the ecological and economic benefits between monocultures and IMTA in open-water systems. We developed an emergy analysis framework for mariculture ecosystems, which revealed significant differences in the energy flow process among the three culture models. The emergy analysis showed that IMTA had the largest environmental sustainability index (ESI), indicating the highest sustainability, among the three culture models. Using the cost-benefit analysis (CBA), we developed a new index, the relative coefficient (RC), to balance the benefits and the efficiency of culture models. As revealed by the CBA, IMTA exhibited the highest net present value (NPV), the highest benefit to cost ratio (BCR), and the highest RC among the three models, suggesting that IMTA is the optimal model with both economic and environmental benefits. Our study demonstrated that IMTA is a sustainable mariculture model appropriate for a wide range of applications in the open-water systems in China.