THE ADVANCE IN STUDIES ON COASTAL VULNERABILITY TO GLOBAL CHANGE

Due to the global changing and its impacts, the coast zone is one of the most vulnerable area in the future. To make a further understanding to the coast vulnerability and make measures for avoiding the adverse impacts of global changing, the IPCC stimulated the countries with coast area to assess the vulnerability of their coast zone. Based on the related studies, the coastal vulnerability concept and the vulnerability assessments is discussed in this paper. Following the IPCC CZMS (1992), the coastal vulnerability is defined as "The degree of incapability to cope with the consequences of climate change and accelerated sea-level rise". Because coast zone located the transitional area between land and sea and is the area with the densest population, the coastal zones are susceptible to global change. To maintain the ability of physical resilience and realize the sustainable development management is the key to solve the problem. Recently, to understand the vulnerability degree and study the science management. The vulnerability assessment have been done in lots of countries and regions according to the common method of IPCC. This paper also describes the common method of vulnerability assessment and the main results of present coast vulnerability assessment. At the same time, the further study content are put forward, that is the accurate modeling study on coast response to global change, the methods of integrated coast vulnerability assessment, dynamic vulnerability assessment methods and more extensive cooperation in coast vulnerability study.