Interdisciplinary tidal-flat research efforts among the fields of biology, geochemistry, and sedimentology: a case study from a Korean tidal flat

摘要

The Korean tidal flats on the west coast have been continuously developed, particularly at an alarming rate during the past decades. Beginning on a purpose of creating paddy fields, the reclamation of tidal flats has grown in space to encompass a hugeindustrial complex. The Saemangeum Dyke typifies the present-time regional reclamation engineering works. Against these developments, however, there have been increasingly persistent social movements to assert that the natural tidal flats should be muchmore valuable than the developed ones even from the economical viewpoint. Despite nation-wide debates on environmental concerns caused by the tidal-flat developments, comprehensive scientific results applicable to mediating these debates have been rarein reality. In this situation, an interdisciplinary research program was performed by the KORDI during 2009-2010 to seek for possible co-operations between different fields of marine sciences in the studies of tidal-flat environments. Scientifically, theKORDI program was thought to be timely and a prerequisite for understanding marine environments of estuaries and shelf in the Yellow Sea.