The ecological footprint study of marine fisheries in Liaoning Province of China based on system dynamics

Since the end of the 20th century, with the rapid development of the marine economy, the marine environment of Liaoning Province in China was under tremendous pressure and the fishery resources have been in serious decline. The marine fishing output of Liaoning Province was reduced from 1.502x107 t in 2000 to 5.244x106 t in. Using STELLA software as the modeling platform, we followed the basic steps of system dynamics modeling (SD model), combined with the principle of ecological footprint of fisheries to establish the SD model of ecological footprint of fisheries in Liaoning Province of China, and applied the fuzzy evaluation method to comprehensively evaluate the ecological carrying capacity of Liaoning marine area. The results show that marine fishery resources in Liaoning Province have been in ecological deficit and unsustainable development. The ecological footprint of fisheries in Liaoning Province has increased from 1.08x107 km2 to 1.88x107 km2 with an average value of 1.60x107 km2 between 2000 and 2018, which is already higher than the ecological carrying capacity of 3.20x106 km2 and about 5 times of the carrying capacity, which means that fishing pressure needs to be reduced to at least 20% of its current level for the ecological footprint of fisheries to rebound and for the ecological deficit to decrease steadily, thus preventing an ecosystem collapse.