Assessment of Ecosystem Health of Panlong River, an Urban River in Kunming City

Healthy urban river ecosystem is the important symbol of the sustaining development of a city. This thesis discussed the issues of the ecosystem health situation of Panlong River, an urban river in Kunming city. This can provide the reference and scientific strategy for the government to renovate the urban river comprehensively. Using the comprehensive index evaluation method, we selected some indicators to characterize the main features and functions of urban river ecosystem to establish a comprehensive index system for evaluating urban river ecosystem health. These indicators included six aspects: water quality indicators, aquatic life indicators, hydrology indicators, river channel indicators, riparian zone indicators and social indicators. Total of them are 20 indicators. And the evaluation criteria was ascertained. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to determine the weight of the indicators and the comprehensive assessment model was also built. Pilot study results indicate that the ecosystem of Panlong River in Kunming city is in the health status in 2011. The results showed that the comprehensive renovation of the Panlong River was very effective. Based on the ecosystem health assessment results of Panlong Rive and evaluation score of each indicator, we made certain the limiting factors that affect the urban river ecosystem health, which are vegetation of riparian zone, the water quality, aquatic habitat, the curve situation of the river channel, the form of bank protection, etc. And some suggestions were also provided for Panlong River ecological restoration.