Study on Dynamic Changes of Mangroves Based on Image Interactive Interpretation Sysytem

Mangrove is an important indicator of biodiversity (Feoli, 2001), its conservation is very important to protect the ecological balance of sea and coastline. More than 90% of the mangrove vegetation species of China in Hainan, and they are about half of the world. But, in recent years, some of mangrove forests haven't been protected well, and result in decreasing. How to monitor the dynamic changes of mangrove is a crucial problem to the conservation of mangrove ecosystem. For management department, it is necessary to know that the distribution, the amount and the dynamic changes in different periods of time. However, it is a difficult task for ground surveying because many mangrove forests grow in the beach of granule sediments in the bottom of sea. And the traditional ground surveying is not so efficient for the decision management and its protection because of the long period and the large expenses. Moreover, it can't provide the historic information by ground surveying. While remote sensing technology can quickly provide the dynamic macro-information for the objects on the surface of the earth, and it can deduce the historic information from the old remote sensing images and the background information. In our study, multi-temporal remote sensing images and its background sources was employed to complete investigation of the dynamic changes of the mangrove forest for Hainan Island in three different periods of time. This paper presents its principal methods and procedures.