Estimating environmental value losses from earth materials excavation and infilling for large-scale airport construction: a case of Dalian Offshore Airport, Dalian, China.

Large-scale airport construction removes large quantities of earth materials, resulting in serious environmental pollution and ecosystem damage. However, studies of environmental concerns caused by the materials used in airport construction are still preliminary, and those case studies on the impacts of large-scale offshore airport development are very limited. China's Dalian Offshore Airport is considered here to study the environmental value loss from 240 million m3 of materials excavations and 21 km2 of artificial island infillings. The findings show that the calculated annual environmental value loss for the development of the Dalian Offshore Airport is approximately US$7.75 million, including US$1.81 million and US$1.47 million of direct economic loss of timber resources and marine biology resources, respectively, and US$1.53 million and US$2.79 million value losses of forest and marine ecosystem services damaged caused by materials excavation and infilling, respectively. The conclusions of this study provide an important foundation to quantitatively analyse the environmental impact of the Dalian Offshore Airport's development and can be used as a reference for similar engineering and environment impact assessment programs.

A study of the temporal robustness of the growing global container-shipping network.

Whether they thrive as they grow must be determined for all constantly expanding networks. However, few studies have focused on this important network feature or the development of quantitative analytical methods. Given the formation and growth of the global container-shipping network, we proposed the concept of network temporal robustness and quantitative method. As an example, we collected container liner companies' data at two time points (2004 and 2014) and built a shipping network with ports as nodes and routes as links. We thus obtained a quantitative value of the temporal robustness. The temporal robustness is a significant network property because, for the first time, we can clearly recognize that the shipping network has become more vulnerable to damage over the last decade: When the node failure scale reached 50% of the entire network, the temporal robustness was approximately -0.51% for random errors and -12.63% for intentional attacks. The proposed concept and analytical method described in this paper are significant for other network studies.

Comparing effects of land reclamation techniques on water pollution and fishery loss for a large-scale offshore airport island in Jinzhou Bay, Bohai Sea, China.

Plans are being made to construct Dalian Offshore Airport in Jinzhou Bay with a reclamation area of 21 km(2). The large-scale reclamation can be expected to have negative effects on the marine environment, and these effects vary depending on the reclamation techniques used. Water quality mathematical models were developed and biology resource investigations were conducted to compare effects of an underwater explosion sediment removal and rock dumping technique and a silt dredging and rock dumping technique on water pollution and fishery loss. The findings show that creation of the artificial island with the underwater explosion sediment removal technique would greatly impact the marine environment. However, the impact for the silt dredging technique would be less. The conclusions from this study provide an important foundation for the planning of Dalian Offshore Airport and can be used as a reference for similar coastal reclamation and marine environment protection.