Group items tagged

Dead mangrove forests in northern Australia found to emit more methane than live trees.

Cet écosystème indispensable a disparu sur des milliers d'hectares et sur un millier de kilomètres le long du littoral, probablement en quelques semaines.

Parties to the Nairobi Convention for the Protection, Management, and Development of the Coastal and Marine Environment of the Eastern Africa region (Nairobi Convention) concluded the 10th Conference of Parties (COP10) today with new actions on protecting critical habitats like mangroves and combating climate change in the region.

Introduction: Cyanobacteria are important members of the dense biofilms that colonize available substrates in mangrove habitats worldwide. However, their taxonomic diversity and biological activities have received little attention.

Ethnobiological knowledge is an important part of people's capacity to manage, conserve, and improve the governance of mangrove ecosystems. This paper assesses the ethnobiological importance of mangroves to coastal communities adjacent to seven mangrove forests in Southern and North-western Sri Lanka. 197 households were interviewed, and respondents identified various mangrove ecosystem goods and services. Fruit juice produced from Sonneratia spp. and salads made with Acrostichum aureum L. young leaves constitutes valuable edible products in both regions. Rhizophora mucronata Lamk. and Lumnitzera racemosa Willd., were employed as alternative sources of fuel. Other uses of mangroves include wood for construction, chemical, and medicinal products. However, the usage extent was significantly higher in the Southern province (87.6%) compared to the North-western province (51%). Five indices were developed to understand the ethnobiological knowledge of respondents (Mangrove Use Index, Perception Index, Regulation Awareness Index, and Knowledge Index, Mangrove Dynamics Index). Except for the Mangrove Use Index, the rest of the indices were significantly different between the provinces. Communities with higher mangrove knowledge showed lesser usage. Respondents had negative attitudes towards the regulations that limit/did not allow the community to enter mangrove forests. Community participation, ethnobiological importance, and perspectives regarding how the community wants to manage mangrove forests should be taken into account to avoid conflicts in the future. Considering local perceptions and translating them into mangrove management regulations can be effective in guiding sustainable mangrove management in Sri Lanka as well as in other countries in the world.

The Mahanadi Estuarine System (MES), with a complex network of freshwater channels, rivers, and mangroves, is a leading seaport in State Odisha on the east coast of India, but subjected to intense human activity in recent years. Such anthropic impingements are known to impact sediment-dwelling biota adversely. However, information on the macrobenthic community of the MES is not well documented yet. Therefore, the primary objectives of this study (February 2013-March 2017) were to address knowledge gaps on the macrobenthic community structure vis-à-vis local environmental conditions and to evaluate the extent of anthropogenic disturbances on macrobenthos. The results from 264 benthic grab samples (van Veen, 0.04 m2; 2 replicates × 12 GPS fixed locations × 3 seasons) revealed 73 taxa representing 64 genera and 48 families of macrobenthic fauna. The polychaetes (81.41%) and crustaceans (15.42%) were significant faunal groups that contributed mainly to the benthic population and diversity. Multivariate approaches using benthic community attributes and biotic indices (AMBI and M-AMBI) as proxy measures of environmental disturbances proved effective for appraisal. The correlations between the environmental parameters (temperature, pH, salinity) and community estimates were statistically significant. Hierarchical clustering analysis disclosed three major groups (Global R 0.70; p < 0.002) influenced by tolerant/opportunist species. The lower abundance, richness, diversity, and dominance of opportunistic species mark the signs of environmental stress. The community health status remained unbalanced, as indicated by AMBI scoring. M-AMBI analysis contributed best in differentiating areas exposed to diverse impacts and indicated polluted community health status with moderate ecological quality. Our results reiterate the effective use of macrobenthos as bioindicators for ecological status and monitoring. The findings could be utilized for future monitoring assessments, transl

Southeast Asia is home to some of the planet's most carbon-dense and biodiverse mangrove ecosystems. There is still much uncertainty with regards to the timing and magnitude of changes in mangrove cover over the past 50 years. While there are several regional to global maps of mangrove extent in Southeast Asia over the past two decades, data prior to the mid-1990s is limited due to the scarcity of Earth Observation (EO) data of sufficient quality and the historical limitations to publicly available EO. Due to this literature gap and research demand in Southeast Asia, we conducted a classification of mangrove extent using Landsat 1-2 MSS Tier 2 data from 1972 to 1977 for three Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. Mangrove extent land cover maps were generated using a Random Forest machine learning algorithm that effectively mapped a total of 15,420.51 km2. Accuracy assessments indicated that the classification for the mangrove and non-mangrove class had a producer's accuracy of 80% and 98% user's accuracy of 90% and 96%, and an overall accuracy of 95%. We found a decline of 6,830 km2 between the 1970s and 2020, showing that 44% of the mangrove area in these countries has been lost in the past 48 years. Most of this loss occurred between the 1970s and 1996; rates of deforestation declined dramatically after 1996. This study also elaborated on the nature of mangrove change within the context of the social and political ecology of each case study country. We urge the remote sensing community to empathetically consider the local need of those who depend on mangrove resources when discussing mangrove loss drivers.

Myanmar is believed to be experiencing one of the highest rates of mangrove loss in the world. When a company bought land containing a mangrove forest in the country's Tanintharyi region, with plans to convert it into prawn farms, the local community fought back.

Mangroves, intertidal forests, are increasingly considered a high-priority ecosystem for international conservation efforts. Setting targets for future mangrove conservation and restoration requires understanding of the health of the ecosystem. However, the way 'ecosystem health' is defined varies across locations, users, and indices due to differences in knowledge of the ecosystem, scales of the ecosystem being assessed, perceptions of what is 'healthy', or because of differences in the way people use or benefit from ecosystems. This can result in misunderstandings which can undermine effective actions to protect and restore functioning ecosystems. Here, we use a case study of a mangrove fishing community in coastal Thailand to examine how local people assess and define mangrove ecosystem health. Through participatory workshops, we show that local people use at least 27 indicators to define mangrove ecosystem health, including biological, physical, and human indices. Mangrove ecosystem health is defined by both direct material benefits derived from the ecosystem, non-material aspects, and the relational value experienced through 'bundles' of benefits linked to people's livelihood activities. Our findings suggest that ecosystem health frameworks would be more useful if they incorporated social components and metrics, recognising both the interdependencies between ecosystems and human societies, and that ecosystems possess intrinsic value. Local communities that interact most closely with ecosystems can contribute to improving and operationalising frameworks for ecosystem health.