A summary of special section: regional environmental oceanography in the South China Sea and its adjacent areas (REO-SCS)

摘要

The South China Sea (SCS) is an important marginal sea in the western Pacific Ocean, surrounded by 9 countries: Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Since ancient times, the SCS has served as a convenient navigation waterway for the Southeast Asian nations to communicate with each other and with nations of the outside world. Up to now, the SCS has been one of the busiest waterways in the world because of the weight and high growth rate of the region in the world economy and trade (Zheng et al. 2006). It is an inexorable trend, therefore, for the oceanographers from surrounding countries to pay more and more attention to the research of regional environmental oceanography in the SCS and its adjacent areas.