3.
Abstract of research comprehensible to a non-specialist
The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA, Fig. 1) is one of the fastest developing bay
areas in the world and covers a vast land area of 56,000 km2 over the Pearl River Basin (PRB) and 20,000 km2
of adjacent ocean. It has a population exceeding 80 million and aspires to become a new global technology
and innovation hub under national development strategies. Ensuring the GBA’s sustainable development will
require a healthy and resilient environment as determined by the sustainability of the interlinked spheres that
compose the regional earth system (RES), including the lithosphere (land), the hydrosphere (oceans and rivers),
the atmosphere, and the biosphere (living things).
The RES of the GBA is regulated primarily and intrinsically by each sphere’s dynamic processes and
influenced extrinsically by interactions among the spheres. For example, the terrestrial (land) processes of the
PRB are controlled by complex interactions between the land, aquatic environments, and atmosphere, which
together regulate the freshwater volume as well as nutrient and pollutant loadings in the Pearl River that
discharge into the adjacent ocean. As such interwoven physical and biogeochemical processes occur at
multiple spatiotemporal scales in the RES and respond to intensifying human activities and climate change,
they form an integrated land-ocean-atmosphere-human activity-climate system, which determines the short
and long-term environmental sustainability, carbon budget to achieve neutrality, and prosperity and
development trajectory of the GBA.
A single discipline alone cannot holistically address the complex and pressing environmental challenges
(Fig. 2) faced by the GBA. RES research has thus become a key national initiative to better understand and
realize environmental sustainability in many countries but remains in its infancy globally. The proposed
project will therefore take an unprecedented holistic approach to investigate the interactions among natural
forcings, human activities, and climate change using an integrated system to create an RES framework.
Through this pioneering interdisciplinary research, this project will also develop a digital twin or a digital
model that integrates all streaming data and provides a visual interface to understand the spatiotemporal status
and evolution, and simulate the future of the RES for facilitating data-driven decision-making in the GBA. By
integrating interdisciplinary perspectives, advanced methodologies, and a world-class research team, this
project will provide comprehensive knowledge and science-based mitigation strategies via the human-RES
integrated assessment framework (Fig. 3) to safeguard the environment and development of the GBA and
present a case study for similar bay areas worldwide.
PART II – Details of the Research Proposal
1. (a) Mission, goals and deliverables
(i) Mission: Conduct pioneering regional earth system (RES) research and provide science-based
understanding, planning and mitigation strategies and solutions through a digital twin to subsequently
safeguarding environmental sustainability and resilience against human activities and climate change
in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).
(ii) Goals
(I) Investigate integrated terrestrial (river basin), oceanic, and atmospheric processes that govern
the cross-sphere exchanges of material and energy in the RES.
(II) Diagnose the human activities and climate change and their interaction with the natural ecosystem
of the GBA via a human-RES integrated assessment framework.
(III) Assess and quantify the key processes, environmental hazards, and their future trends and the
underlying mechanisms across time and space in the GBA using the digital twin.
(iii) Deliverables
(I) A holistic understanding of the land-ocean-atmosphere processes and interactions, and their
statuses and trends in response to rapid social and economic development and climate change
in the GBA.
(II) A database from broad and interdisciplinary studies that will serve as the first-ever digital twin
GBA platform to diagnose and predict environmental capacities (tipping point) in the GBA.
(III) Science-based mitigation strategies to support long-term planning and management of the
land-ocean-atmosphere environment and thus safeguarding sustainable development in the GBA.
If the mission, goals and / or deliverables are different from the preliminary proposal, please mark the change(s) concerned with
* and reasons for the change(s) must be provided below. N.A.
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