Application of Sustainable Development for Wetland Landscape
Management- Case Study on Xixi Wetland Park, China
WANG Xiyao, WANG Xiaobing
Zhejiang Yuying Vocational and Technology College, Hangzhou, China, 310018
[email protected]
Abstract: Wetland area is one of the most key important factors for Chinese current tourist resource,
especially in some provinces where are abundant in waterfront wildlife and resources. Moreover, as a
distinctive type of landscape in the gardening art, sustainable development of wetland management is
becoming a new project in China. This study conducted a case study on the Xixi National Wetland Park
to discuss its characteristics concerning integration of tourism and landscape for wetland sustainable
development, and explored wetland tourism resource including three aspects, “living experience tour in
wetland village”, “knowledge tour in wetland eco-community” and “waterfront sight tour in wetland
topography” for wetland landscape’s sustainable development.
Keywords: Sustainable development, Xixi wetland landscape, Tourism
1. Introduction
A new trend of Chinese tour is “suburb country tour”, “original ecosystem tour” and “culture tour”. The
wetland landscape and the residential custom match these characteristics at the right moment, and
wetland area becomes attractive to Chinese government and the public as well.
Wetland refers to natural or artificial, permanent or temporary marshes, peat bog and waters (motionless
or flowing, fresh water or salt water) including coastal seawater areas no deep than 6 meters in low tide.
Wetland also includes beaches or riversides close to wetland areas, including island habitats, where the
surrounding seawaters are no deeper than 6 meters at low tide within the area of wetland. Wetland
ecological systems together with marine ecological systems and forest ecological system makes up the
three key important ecological systems of the earth that together provide a huge percentage of the
resources we require to sustain our human life and human society.
Xixi National Wetland Park, the first National Wetland Park in China, is located in the western outskirts
China’s beautiful paradise city of Hangzhou and lies at the southern tip of the longest and oldest canal in
the world, Hangzhou-Beijing Canal. Xixi Wetland covers an area of 3.46 square kilometers and features
abundant ecological resources, beautiful natural scenes and a rich cultural heritage of many millennia.
Xi-Xi wetland is famous as one of the "Three Xi" in Hangzhou City, along with Xi-Hu Lake (the West
Lake) and Xi-Ling Seal Society (Chen and Wang, 2006). It includes thousands of ponds, networks of
streams and rivers, extensive reed beds and ecological areas and provides rich examples of aspects of
urban wetland, as well as agricultural and cultural wetland environments. Many unique cultural aspects
add to Xixi wetland park’s fascination including the persimmon and plum festivals, the dragon boats, the
silk industry, boat born martial arts and the prestige of being the birthplace of the famous Shaoxin opera.
In this way Xixi National Wetland Park clearly represents a unique and unrivalled recreation and
education experience.
2. Background of Xixi Wetland
Xixi Wetland, which has some evidences of an original wetland culture, can retrospect to 4000-5000
years ago. Specific records began in Dong Han Dynasty (223 AD) where Buddhists gathered to deliver
sermons and were engaged in religious stone carving. Consequently the first Buddhist temple was built
on the site. The persimmon, plums, reeds, bamboo and magnificent camphor trees of Xixi Wetland at
that time were becoming highly prized, and the ecology of Xixi Wetland was a key feature referenced in
poems, writings and paintings of the period, as was its bird lives. Building names, at this time, reflected
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Xixi Wetland Park’s ecological nature, prime examples including the Plum and Bamboo Villa
established in 1839, and the Autumn Snow Temple referring to the sea of white reed heads viewed from
the temple’s upper gallery. The fishing culture of Xixi has also been an important factor to the city - the
fish and terrapins of Xixi’s 3000 ponds supplying much of the city of Hangzhou and surrounds. In 2002,
the authority of Hangzhou City implemented a new development project, titled “West Lake Westwards”
(Fig. 1), which extended the scope of the West Lake Landscape Area by containing the western suburban
area of wetland for the wetland resource sustainable development.
The paper examined the characteristics of Xixi Wetland Park for tourism and landscape which involved
in biodiversity of Wetland environments, such as basic natural sight of waterfront ecological elements,
spatial forms and interaction, and the specialty of waterscape design. The planners and designers paid
much attention to all the involved people, reflecting efficiency and equity of the environments. They
also built the project of Xixi Wetland Eco-Tourism sustainable Development.
Fig. 1 The Controlled Detail Planning of the Xixi Wetland
3. Analysis
With the economic growth, Hangzhou city became more urbanization. The most widespread threats to
Xixi Wetland Park are drainage for agriculture, settlements and urbanization, pollution and hunting.
During the 1950s, tropical and sub-tropical wetlands have been disappearing rapidly. As for degradation,
mechanisms such as embanking a river, over-exploitation of groundwater resources or building dams,
are only a few of many reasons why Xixi wetland is deteriorating. Most wetland habitats are extremely
vulnerable with many threatened fish, amphibians and other species.
It is important to conserve Xixi Wetland Park’s sight for sustainable development. First, the Wetland
Park’s environment protection laws should be passed. The wetland is designated as "Provincial Nature
Reserve" and as "Conservation Site for the Wintering Habitats". A management plan is in place and
awareness education is executed. The conservation targets include important water birds and the wetland
ecosystem. Patrols control indiscriminate poaching and fishing. Long-term monitoring of the ecological
environment on fixed sites is carried out. In general, the fragile ecosystem has been well preserved due
to good management (Forman, 1995). In 2002, co-management agreements were established with 14
communities in the adjacent zone. The site's catchments are included as key management area in the
wetland restoration project and in the natural forest conservation project. Shrubberies have been
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regenerated from degradation of primary vegetation, as well as conifers.
Secondly, more and more people aware of the importance to protect wetland and it’s ecological. An
"awareness education and publicity" project has been proposed to build wildlife rescue stations and a
center for awareness education, publicity and exhibition for nature conservation. Furthermore, it has
been planned to westward west lake and combined with Xixi Wetland Park, and West Lake with Xixi
Wetland Park into one larger National Nature Reserve, while this proposal still need to be passed by the
National Nature Reserve Evaluation Committee.
Xixi Wetland Park is establishing ecological networks of wetlands. These provide stepping stones for
migrating water birds; crucial for their survival. These networks of protected wetlands will also lead to
increased capacity for local communities to engage in wetland sustainable management.
4. Sustainable Development for Xixi Wetland Landscape
4.1 Living experience tour in wetland village
Xixi Wetland Park is the biggest ecological conservation area among Chinese wetland areas, with
various water resources, hydrophytes and terraneous plants, and wild animals. It is also the home of
birds. A bird platform has been set up in the area for the tourists to view the flying birds, which brings
pleasure to the tourists. For the long-distance migrants, especially birds, based on biological and
geopolitical considerations, tourist can living in wetland village, getting in touch with animal closely
and enjoying the nature gifts (Fig. 2). Meanwhile, some long history building located in Xixi Wetland
Park for living experience (Fig. 3).
Fig. 2 The wetland village life
Fig. 3 The residential buildings in wetland area
4.2 Knowledge tour in wetland eco-community
Since various creative activities take place in Xixi Wetland, people intent to take great advantage of
environment and make it artistic “nature”. As for art works, it emphasizes artistic conception and
combines artificial beauty and natural beauty perfectly in order to reach a nature conception. The sight
of Xixi Wetland Park designed together with emotions and conceptions, and appreciators can be moved
and enjoyed sympathetic response in their minds. And embody the pursuit of nature in Chinese
traditional aesthetics.Unlike with classical gardens, which express the reproduction of natural beauty
based on traditional aesthetics including drawing and thoughts, only satisfying minority sense, Xixi
Wetland Park rises to a higher level of natural beauty and a better accordance with modern living styles
and majority aesthetic senses (Fig. 4).And the wetland museum(Fig. 5), showing a more natural garden,
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and emphasizes relaxation and expresses the ideas of closer to nature. The Xixi wetland in recent years
sightseeing and watching (536,000 tourists/year) have brought significant economic and social benefits,
and it is felt that conservation-based eco-tourism will benefit the protection of the ecosystems.
Due to their religion and culture, the local people lively with nature which includes the protection of
wild animals, e.g. fish is not killed. Diverse research projects have been implemented such as "study on
the environmental impacts of tourism on the nature reserve. Anyway, research equipment and facilities
are still lacking to conduct in-depth studies.
Fig. 5 The wetland museum
Fig.4 Public activities in Xixi Wetland Park
4.3 Waterfront sight tour in wetland topography
Classical gardening pays attention to combination of dynamic water and quiet water (Shen, 2005; Liu,
2006), while Xixi Wetland Park is the presentation of both natural and cultural qualities. Xixi wetland
park adding shoreline and landscape design near side, the scenery implies “a path leads to a peaceful
scene” and the source of water. Classical waterscape design emphasizes the space levels of the water
(Golledge and Stimson, 1997). The quality of space is weighed with the division and permeation. There
are two methods to display different space levels, one is long and narrow surface and another is the
division of the water by setting up bridge or island, the contrast of different levels take a great
experience as the road opens up suddenly before one, and it adds spice to the garden space. The
difference levels space divided by bridges and islands permeate through each other. It forms stratified
space and penetrative effects.
Prior to classical garden’s waterscape design, Xixi Wetland Park uses dynamic water forms and static
ones. Dynamic water, describing in curves, satisfies the aspiration of searching the source. The circles
display static water distribution, which presents an open water surface. The visual form and acoustic
stimulus provides an ideal place for human leisure activities, such as strolling, talking, boating and
thinking. In one word, both styles enrich the forms of wetland waterscape and make the Xixi Wetland
full of vitality and vividness (Fig. 6).
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Fig. 6 The wetland water landscape
5. Conclusion
Xixi Wetland Park integrates some classical waterscape designs with the modern development project.
And it plays a good role in modern tourism and landscape as leisure product. Meanwhile it is a proper
strategy to expend the West Lake Landscape Area by taking Xixi Wetland into a water network of the
city. The development of Xixi Wetland Park benefits more local people and foreign tourists as well,
which includes three aspects, “living experience tour in wetland village”, “knowledge tour in wetland
eco-community” and “waterfront sight tour in wetland topography”. Its great success depends on
exerting the advantages of the wetland eco-system, and on introducing modern technology into
traditional natural garden designs. This project brings a fashionable trend in Chinese tourism for
sustainable development by integration of countryside life, multiple waterscape and science
popularization of wetland.
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