Water Bird Diversity as an Indicator of Coastal Health and Pollution: A Narrative Review with SWOT Perspectives

Abstract

Coastal ecosystems are among the world's most productive environments, supporting fisheries, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, shoreline stabilization, and numerous ecosystem services essential for human well-being. However, rapid urbanization, industrialization, land reclamation, agricultural expansion, aquaculture, tourism development, and climate change have accelerated habitat degradation and pollution across coastal regions. These pressures have highlighted the need for reliable biological indicators capable of reflecting ecological conditions beyond conventional physicochemical monitoring. Among vertebrate taxa, water birds have emerged as valuable ecological indicators because they occupy different trophic levels, respond rapidly to habitat alteration, integrate environmental conditions over broad spatial and temporal scales, and are relatively easy to monitor through standardized census techniques. Their diversity, abundance, breeding success, migratory behaviour, and community composition provide important insights into ecosystem integrity, food web stability, habitat quality, and contaminant exposure. This narrative review synthesizes current knowledge on the role of water bird diversity as an indicator of coastal ecosystem health and pollution using a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analytical framework. The review integrates classical ecological theories, biodiversity assessment methods, avian ecology, conservation biology, and recent studies on waterbird monitoring from Southeast Asia and other regions. The strengths of water bird monitoring include high public visibility, cost effectiveness, and ecological relevance, whereas weaknesses include species mobility and natural seasonal variability. Emerging technologies, citizen science, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence offer significant opportunities to improve monitoring programmes; while accelerating coastal development, pollution, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and climate change remain substantial threats to both water birds and coastal ecosystems. The review concludes that water bird diversity should complement chemical, biological, and habitat assessments within integrated coastal monitoring frameworks to strengthen ecosystem-based management and long term conservation planning.

Keywords: Coastal Ecosystems; Water Birds; Biodiversity; Biomonitoring; Pollution Indicators; SWOT Perspectives

Citation

Kong Yap C, Dwi Setyawan A, Horie Y. Water Bird Diversity as an Indicator of Coastal Health and Pollution: A Narrative Review with SWOT Perspectives. WebLog J Environ Sci. wjets.2026.h1202. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22167958