Ecological restoration has become a critical tool for mitigating ecosystem degradation and enhancing ecological health. Effective restoration efforts require regionalisation through identifying of social-ecological system (SES) that integrate socioeconomic and ecological characteristics. However, methodological gaps in clarifying interdimensional interplay often hinder coastal restoration planning. This study develops a spatial characterisation framework to identify coastal SESs for targeted ecological restoration in Zhejiang Province, China. Integrating socioeconomic data and land-marine ecological variables across 28 coastal counties, we employed principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering to delineate nine distinct SESs exhibiting significant heterogeneity: northern clusters (SES1/7/9) show high socioeconomic performance but suboptimal environmental indicators; southern systems (SES2/8) feature lower development but superior environmental conditions; central zones (SES5/6) demonstrate moderate socioeconomic-environmental profiles; while island systems (SES3/4) display low population density, high aging rates, and unique biogeophysical traits. Precise SES categorization enabled identification of primary degradation pressures and formulation tailored restoration strategies within each SES in Zhejiang. Critically, transcending administrative boundaries is essential to accommodate intra-city diversity and cross-city unity, given prevalent transboundary SESs and intra-city variations. We propose four management implications: ecosystem service conservation, pressure-specific interventions, cross-sector governance mechanisms, and participatory restoration incentivization. This framework establishes a transferable approach for sustainable coastal SES restoration management.
Over the past centuries, the uncontrolled exploitation and utilization of natural resources by humans have had tremendous impacts on the Earth system. Drastic changes in the global land use/cover patterns, along with the accumulation of resource and environmental pressures, have led to a series of problems and challenges such as environmental pollution, ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss, all of which threaten the sustainability of human well-being. To emphasize the seriousness of this ecological crisis, the United Nations has declared 2020-2030 the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Ecological restoration is defined as the effort to aid the recovery of a degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystem intending to restore its integrity, including individual, cultural, socioeconomic, and ecological values to enhance social-ecological resilience. Consequently, extensive ecological restoration has become a global priority and is now regarded as essential for ensuring sustainability. China is actively promoting ecological restoration nationwide, viewing it as a crucial component of its ecological civilization, and has achieved positive outcomes. This makes China an excellent case study area for adaptive restoration efforts aimed at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the future.
Regionalisation is essential for ecological restoration and forms the basis for formulating relevant policies and planning. Identifying priority areas for ecological restoration is currently a major focus in research. Three primary methods are commonly used: (1) constructing a framework utilizing multiple indicators for ecological status assessment; (2) conducting regionalisation according to ecological dynamics guided by ecosystem service theory; and (3) identifying priority areas under multiple or simulated scenarios. Most of these studies primarily consider the ecosystem itself. Various ecological variables are employed to simulate different stages of ecological progress, identifying areas vulnerable to degradation. For example, ecosystem services are assessed using various ecological models, identifying areas where values are low or declining as priority restoration areas. However, these criteria often overlook the interaction between regional socioeconomic development and ecological conservation, a critical factor for effective local ecological restoration.
Social-ecological systems (SES) are complex adaptive systems where social and bio-geophysical dimensions interact across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Understanding the interactions between ecological and social systems is crucial for achieving sustainability and plays a vital role in effective ecological restoration planning. However, the diversity of SES, where social and biogeophysical dimensions interact on multiple spatial and temporal levels, makes it challenging to grasp the associations between social, economic, and ecological components. Scholars tend to develop simple theoretical models to analyse aspects of SES and prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions, but frequently fails. Only a common, classificatory, and multilevel framework has been proposed to identify relevant variables for studying a single focal SES. This framework includes core subsystems such as economic development, demographic trends, political stability, government policies, market incentives, and related ecosystems, etc. Coastal areas are home to hundreds of millions of people and the majority of the world’s cities. Humans have long enjoyed the benefits of coastal ecosystems, including food sources, disaster mitigation, and recreational experiences, etc. At the same time, coastal systems face serious risks, including coastal erosion, contamination, and species decline, which jeopardise the ecosystem services they offer. Restoring degraded coastal ecosystem services through sustainable strategy and planning requires a deep understanding of intricate interconnections within coastal social-ecological systems (SES). However, empirical evidence is lacking on how these relationships manifest spatially — specifically, the spatial composition and configuration of coastal SES. While several methods have been proposed to map ecosystem services or human impacts on coastal areas, only a limited number of studies have devised instruments to depict SES spatially. The limited advancement in methodologies for spatial characterisation of SES is a major drawback to the use of the SES framework in ecological restoration management, potentially leading to mismanagement. Additionally, evidence shows that marine environmental conditions strongly impact the structure and function of terrestrial SES, complicating the characterisation of coastal SES. Given the interconnected nature land-marine ecosystems and socioeconomic systems, it is crucial to account for the linkages between marine and terrestrial elements in ecological restoration in coastal areas. Therefore, spatially identifying and characterising SES by analysing socioeconomic and land-marine ecological characteristics has become pivotal for ecological restoration, forming the core focus of this study.
In the subsequent sections, this study will develop a comprehensive assessment framework based on socioeconomic and land-marine ecological data to characterise and spatially identify SES in coastal areas. We will test this framework on the coast of Zhejiang Province, China, to help delineate boundaries of ecological restoration. Accurate regionalisation of coastal areas can aid in prioritizing comprehensive management and planning tailored to each SES for effective ecological restoration.
