Abstract:Based on the discussion over the characteristic and health connotation of estuary ecosystem, the appropriate indices for estuary ecosystem health evaluation from the view of ecosystem integrity were created. With comprehensive consideration of the actual status of the Yellow River estuary ecosystem, on the basis of the PSR(pressure-state-response)model, 50 indices were selected from the evaluation indices including biological ecology, environmental quality, social economy, management measures and human health of the study area, according to the principle of building estuary ecosystem health evaluation indicator system. In addition, the acquisition ways and calculation methods were detailed explained for these indices, then an index system appropriate for the evaluation of Yellow River estuary ecosystem health was established. This system is a four-layer hierarchy-structured index system involving the target layer, the subsystem layer, criterion layer and the evaluation index layer.