On the afternoon of May 18, the 2014 Shanghai Science and Technology Awards Conference took place at the Shanghai Exhibition Center. Han Zheng, Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee of Shanghai, attended the ceremony and delivered a speech. Zhou Bo, Vice Mayor of Shanghai, read aloud The Decision of the Shanghai Municipal Government on Commending Outstanding Science and Technology Professionals (Projects) of 2014. Yang Xiong, Mayor and Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee of Shanghai, presided at the event.
Professor Yang Shilun accepts the award on behalf of his research team.
The Influence of Recent Changes in the Yangtze River Valley on the Estuarine Environment is a project jointly completed by five professors —Yang Shilun, Wu Ying, Zhang Weiguo, Dai Zhijun, and Du Jinzhou, as well as their collaborators — at ECNU's State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research. The project took 1st place at the Shanghai Natural Science Awards. Professor Yang Shilun accepted the prize from the municipal leader on behalf of his research team.
Based upon on-site observations, sampling, and data analysis, this project is a multi-disciplinary joint research undertaking that surveys fluctuations in Yangtze River substances (water, sediment, biogenic elements, and pollutants) that flow into the East Sea. The study measures the influence of these substances on the estuarine environment over the past few decades, aiming to shed light on trends of erosion of Yangtze River sediment into the East Sea, as well as determine the main reasons behind this trend. The research results serve to enrich public knowledge about the influence of high-intensity human activities on estuarine-coastal environments (especially in river basin areas) and provide a scientific justification for the sustainable utilization of estuarine resources and environment.
The project has generated a series of papers that have been published in major international journals, earning widespread recognition from the academic world and from expert scientists in the field. Twenty of thep most important papers have been cited over 800 times by Nature, Science, and other SCI-indexed journals. One paper was chosen by the American Geophysical Union (AUG) as a Journal Highlight and another paper, which appeared in Global and Planetary Change, ranks second in a list of the most cited articles in the past five years. The research results have been incorporated into the research program of LOICZ (Land Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone) and into the national evaluation report on the influence of the Three Gorges Project on the environment.
