The Effects of Coastal Tidal Creek Hydrological Connectivity on Salt Marsh Regeneration in Yellow River Delta Meng Luo1, Baoshan Cui * School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing100875, China Coastal salt marsh is located in sea-land transition zone, which has complex environment and high primary productivity. It is not only the habitat of many important species, but plays an important role in global climate change and sea level rise issue as well, because of wave-reducing and siltation. Being influenced by human activities, the salt marsh ecosystem has been highly affected in its structure and function. Tidal creek hydrological connectivity is not only one of the most important ecological processes in coastal wetland ecosystem, but also an important way to maintain and restore the salt marsh. This thesis mainly discusses about the relationship between tidal creek hydrological connectivity and vegetation distribution as well as regeneration, with the seed migration and spreading as the breakthrough point, this study aims at analyzing the mechanism of the effect of tidal creek hydrological connectivity on salt marsh vegetation regeneration and offering efficient ways in salt marsh restoration to improve its abilities in interference defence and self restoring capacity of nature. Take a typical salt marsh tidal creek in Yellow River Delta as example, we found that Suaeda salsa had significant difference in growth, distribution as well as seed bank, with different tidal creek level, distance from tidal creek to ocean and lateral distance. This results are closely related to the soil physicochemical properties and seed-carrying capacity, and also directly related to hydrological connectivity strength in the different tidal creek location. Besides, we developed an index of costal tidal creek hydrological connectivity intensity as a tool to reflect the relationship between the level of tidal creek, morphology and lateral distance as well as the strength of the tidal creek hydrological connectivity. Complementary to the management, the index developed in this study provides a useful tool in guiding salt marsh restoration. Key words: coastal tidal creek; hydrological connectivity; salt marsh; regeneration; seed bank.