Mangrove forests in Kenya have traditionally been used as a source of building poles and firewood (1–3). About 70% of the population along the Kenyan coast depend on mangrove poles for house construction (4), and the recent boom in tourism in the area over the last few decades has led to an increasing demand for mangrove poles for construction of restaurants, hotels and holiday resorts (5). The...

[1] Since the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the role of mangrove forests as natural defenses protecting coastal communities from tsunami disaster has been highlighted. However, some mangrove forests were destroyed by that tsunami. They are expected to have lost their protective functions. In this study, we develop a fragility function to assess the mangrove trees’ vulnerability, expres...

Mangrove forests, distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, are in a constant flux. They provide important ecosystem goods and services to nature and society. In recent years, the carbon sequestration potential and protective role of mangrove forests from natural disasters is being highlighted as an effective option for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The fores...

For the period 1996-2010, we provide the first indication of the drivers behind mangrove land cover and land use change across the (pan-)tropics using time-series Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array-type L-band SAR (PALSAR) data. Multi-temporal radar mosaics were manually interpreted for evidence of...

The importance of mangrove forests in maintaining crucial ecosystem functions such as nutrient filtering, supporting coral reef fisheries, and providing storm buffers has become more evident after the tsunami that ravaged parts of Asia in December 2004 (Alongi 2002; Mumby et al. 2003; UNEP-WCMC 2006). However, these vital tropical ecosystems in the coastal inter-tidal zones, covering about 181,...

Mangrove forests are important natural ecosystems due to their ability to capture and store large amounts of carbon. Forest structural parameters, such as canopy height and above-ground biomass (AGB), provide a good measure for monitoring temporal changes in carbon content. The protected coastal mangrove forest of the Everglades National Park (ENP) provides an ideal location for studying these ...

one of the indicators of management and sustainability control of forest resources is the definition deforestation and degradation types. these factors hazard quantitative and qualitative of the iranian forests. in this study with integrated approach, different forms of forest degradation identified in the forest areas with a reviews of library resources and then investigation the degree of sta...

Temporal variation of atmospheric O3 and its biosphere – atmosphere exchange were monitored in the Sundarbans mangrove forest from January 2011 to December 2011 on bimonthly basis. O3 mixing ratios at 10 m and 20 m heights over the forest atmosphere ranged between 14.66 ± 1.88 to 37.90 ± 0.91 and 19.32 ± 6.27 to 39.80 ± 10.13 ppbv, respectively; having maximal premonsoon and minimal monsoon per...

Ecosystems in the tropical coastal zone exchange particulate organic matter (POM) with adjacent systems, but differences in this function among ecosystems remain poorly quantified. Seagrass beds are often a relatively small section of this coastal zone, but have a potentially much larger ecological influence than suggested by their surface area. Using stable isotopes as tracers of oceanic, terr...

Given the scale and rate of mangrove loss globally, it is increasingly important to map and monitor mangrove forest health in a timely fashion. This study aims to identify the conditions of mangroves in a coastal lagoon south of the city of Mazatlán, Mexico, using proximal hyperspectral remote sensing techniques. The dominant mangrove species in this area includes the red (Rhizophora mangle), t...