QINGDAO, July 10 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday put into operation a large offshore platform for controlled in-situ experiments regarding coastal ecosystems, marking a new phase of systematic, intelligent and open coastal ecological research in the country.
Developed by the Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), the facility is deployed in the Yellow Sea off Rongcheng in east China's Shandong Province. It is the country's largest open-access facility for in-situ coastal experiments, the IOCAS said.
With a total area of 2,000 square meters and an experimental sea zone of 30,000 square meters, the platform is designed to support a wide range of ecological studies under real marine conditions.
"The new platform is essentially a lab moved onto the sea," said Sun Xiaoxia, an IOCAS researcher and leader of the platform development team.
"Under real seawater conditions, we can precisely regulate key factors such as temperature, nutrients and dissolved oxygen, enabling continuous, full-cycle observation and breaking the technical barrier between natural-sea observation and indoor controlled experiments."
The platform comprises modules for automated monitoring, water regulation, mesocosm ecosystems and logistics support. It enables precise single-factor or multi-factor regulation of temperature, nutrients, dissolved oxygen and other variables, allowing researchers to reproduce scenarios like ocean warming, acidification and eutrophication in a real marine environment.
This capability is crucial for understanding how coastal ecosystems respond to both gradual climate trends and extreme events, said Sun.
China's coastal waters, where most marine economic activities and ports are concentrated, are also hotspots for ecological disasters and risks. These waters, notably, are under mounting stress from climate change, land-based inputs and human activities.
"With traditional research vessels, scientists can only collect data at specific times and cross-sections, and lab experiments on land fail to simulate the complex interactions among multiple species and processes in the real ocean," Sun explained.
The new lab is located in a typical mariculture area of northern China, offering conditions for both natural and farmed ecosystem studies. Researchers can conduct scenario experiments on carrying capacity, ecological resilience, marine heatwaves and hypoxia to identify risk thresholds and optimize aquaculture management.
Beyond serving the aquaculture industry, it can provide technical support for disaster prevention, precision restoration and coastal health management, said Sun.
The platform is designed for open international collaboration and will be made available to global research institutions, facilitating joint efforts to tackle pressing marine environmental challenges, she added. ■
