Project Knowledge Document on Nutrient Carrying Capacity in the South China Sea

The UNEP/GEF South China Sea Project Document specifies that the Land-based Pollution Component should evaluate carrying/assimilation capacity of sub-regions and sensitive ecosystems and transboundary movements of contaminants within the South China Sea. Evaluation of the carrying capacity of an open ecosystem with respect to contaminants can be done in a variety of ways, perhaps the simplest of which is to estimate the ‘assimilative capacity, that is the capacity of the ecosystem to internally absorb or convert some or all of the contaminant through some process, natural or manmade, into forms that have negligible impact on the biological processes of that system and are not exported into neighbouring ecosystems. The ecosystem is said to have a high assimilative capacity if all, or a large fraction, of the contaminant input is removed and the net export to the neighbouring ecosystems is either zero or only a small fraction of the input.

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