The Role of Hydrological Data in Managing Water Quality and Ecosystem Health in Coastal Areas

Coastal zones are important centers for both society and the environment, but are increasingly being degraded through human impact and climate change. Although there is ample monitoring information available, the management decision-making relies very little on water quality data. One reason is that management plans ignore primary hydrological principles like flushing times, stratification, and the dynamics of freshwater flow. The framework is proposed here for linking hydrology to coastal management, addressing the gap in bridging monitoring to the ecology assessment. The demonstration on integrating data sources from various origins (in-situ sensors, remote sensing, and citizen science) with cutting-edge technology (machine learning, cloud computing platforms) in this paper strongly evidences that hydrological variables have a controlling impact on the quality of coastal water and the status of ecological systems. This paper suggests a perspective that such integrated data sources within a decision-support system are required as crucial input for ecosystem-based management. Lack of data, need for fine spatial-temporal data resolution is raised. Protecting and maintaining the natural hydrological cycle is fundamental to public health, as it provides vast services such as carbon sequestration and natural protection from storm surges. Technological and policy interventions are advocated for overcoming the challenges in shifting from reactive monitoring to predictive management. Data-driven management will benefit environmental sustainability and promote public health as well as the economy by providing a more robust framework of management that will sustain the use of coastal ecosystems in the face of dynamic change. The proposal aims to set up a design plan for the management of coastal systems, biodiversity protection, and regional governance on coasts and ecosystems on the basis of science.