Can deep learning help us save mangrove forests?

  GLOBAL – Mangrove forests are an essential component of the coastal zones in tropical and subtropical areas, providing a wide range of goods and ecosystem services that play a vital role in ecology. They are also threatened, disappearing, and degraded across the globe. One way to stimulate effective mangrove conservation and encourage policies for their protection is to carefully assess mangrove habitats and how they change, and identify fragmented areas. But obtaining this kind of information is not always an easy task. “Since mangrove forests are located in tidal zones and marshy areas, they are hardly accessible,” says Dr. Neda Bihamta Toosi, postdoc at Isfahan University of Technology in Iran working on landscape pattern changes using remote sensing. In a recent study in the journal Nature Conservation, together with a team of authors, she explored ways to classify these fragile ecosystems using machine learning. Comparing the performance of different combinations of satellite images and classification techniques, the researchers looked at how good each method was at mapping mangrove ecosystems. 

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AFRICA
 

‘They want to silence us’: Uganda cracks down on anti-oil protest

UGANDA – Ugandan environmental campaigner Judith Bero-Irwoth has spent years warning of the risks of a planned crude oil pipeline and its impact on communities in the west of the country. Protests by activists like Bero-Irwoth have ramped up in the Albertine Graben region and the capital, Kampala, in recent years since France’s TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation struck deals to develop Uganda’s oil fields. The agreements include the proposed $3.5-billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which would ship crude from Lake Albert in Uganda to global markets through a port on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. Development groups have raised alarm about the impacts on the climate – saying the pipeline will generate 34 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually – and on communities, as an estimated 14,000 households are at risk of losing their land. But climate campaigners are increasingly being targeted and stifled under the Public Management Order Act and legislation governing NGOs, said Dickens Kamugisha, chief executive of the Kampala-based Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO). Bero-Irwoth said she had become more cautious since police stormed her home in Buliisa district in September 2021 during a community meeting about the oil development plans.

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The government is trying to silence those who are against the pipeline
 

    TANZANIA – EACOP is a massive crude oil pipeline that will involve the transportation of crude oil from Hoima in Uganda to a Tanzanian port located in Chongoleani village, in Tanga region. It will cover 1,445 kilometres in Uganda and Tanzania, but 80 per cent of the land it will go through is in Tanzania. Local communities depend on land as the crucial resource to support their livelihoods, which consist mostly of farming and livestock keeping, so if their land is taken or ruined by the pipeline, they will be seriously affected. The project is therefore going to affect the development of many communities and impact negatively on any effort to create a sustainable and liveable local environment. But EACOP will not only affect people; it will also pose a threat to the animals that depend on the land that will be taken up by this project. As most activists and CSOs have noticed, the government is trying to silence those who are against the pipeline. Some of us have raised our concerns since the very beginning of the project but our questions have not been addressed and the project has continued regardless.
 

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Towards International Women’s Day 2023
 

TANZANIA – The Tanzania Forestry Services Agency (TFS) partnered with various environmental stakeholders, including the Women Against Poverty (WAP) organization, to promote mangrove conservation in coastal areas. TFS, WAP, mangrove clubs, and the coastal community living in the Kigamboni district’s Tundwi Songani ward have teamed together to plant mangroves as one approach to continue to encourage people to be active stakeholders in caring for and protecting mangroves. Through this collaborative effort, TFS, WAP, mangrove clubs, and the coastal community together we planted 3700 mangroves in Tundwi Songani ward. The aim was to promote the protection of mangroves, raise awareness of the importance of mangrove conservation towards mitigating the adverse effects of climate change. This is crucial step towards ensuring the long-term survival of mangroves. As the local communities including fishermen, farmers, and other stakeholders participated. As Principle conservation officer from TFS headquarter provided insights on the importance of conserving mangroves. Together with TFS, mangroves clubs and local community, we planted 3700 mangroves in Tundwi Songani towards achieving sustainable development and ensuring the long-term well-being of our planet.
 

AMERICAS

Mangrove Restoration in Costa Rica: A Collaborative Effort

COSTA RICA – Restoration of Bahía Tomas in La Cruz, Guanacaste is one of the latest initiatives by the Davivienda-GIZ-ACG-FPN alliance. This collaborative effort is working towards restoring and preserving the mangrove ecosystem, which has been damaged by climate change and human activities. The project aims to restore three hectares of the Bahía Tomas mangrove ecosystem by the end of 2023. In addition, ten hectares of damaged mangroves will be closely monitored to begin the restoration and conservation process. Biomonitoring and adaptation actions are being carried out to lower salinity, where natural regeneration has not been possible. The alliance’s efforts to preserve the mangroves go beyond restoration. They also support local communities that depend on the ecosystem for their livelihoods. The Cuajiniquil women’s cooperative – Coopemprendedoras – has benefited the most environmentally, socially, and economically from the mangrove restoration. They have been working to obtain a food truck to promote their work, and GIZ is helping them define a business plan and provide the necessary assets and marketing tools to enable the cooperative’s project. 

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USA – As we know from living on the Suncoast, mangroves are all around us. They grow along almost every coastline, provide habitat for fish and other wildlife, protect our homes from destructive storms and erosion, maintain clean water, and combat climate change, thanks to their carbon-storing abilities. Still, even with their immense beauty and vital importance to our community, mangroves are threatened in our area. To stand up for the trees, Suncoast Waterkeeper has teamed up with Exspanse Artificial Intelligence, Dimensional Geomatics and New College of Florida on a mangrove mapping project, which will track mangrove growth and conditions along northern Sarasota Bay, Palma Sola Bay, southern Tampa Bay, Terra Ceia Bay and the Manatee River. Training for the project starts this month, when Suncoast Waterkeeper and New College data science graduate students will learn how to operate drones, utilizing photogrammetry to measure and map the local mangroves. (Photogrammetry is the act of deriving precise measurements from photographs.) The training, led by Dimensional Geomatics, will provide a standard operating procedure for community and student-based mapping using drone imagery. Exspanse, based out of Longboat Key, will then provide its modeling platform to New College data science students for the hands-on experience of building, training and deploying models using data from the project. 
 

Mangroves common in South Florida are moving north

  USA – Floridians are familiar with mangroves — but imagine them moving into Georgia or South Carolina. With the country experiencing fewer freeze events, mangroves that thrive in coastal wetlands are moving into salt marsh habitats at higher latitudes, Villanova University professor Samantha Chapman tells Axios. Chapman worked on a study exploring how salt marshes and mangroves build elevation in the face of sea-level rise. While mangroves serve as natural sea barriers for coastal communities, help with carbon storage and provide habitats for animals, the study also says that “consequences of this vegetation shift for ecosystem sustainability remain unknown.”The study could help scientists decide how best to manage coastal wetlands, including whether mangroves should be planted. It predicts that black mangroves moving into new environments can build soil elevation by 8 mm per year, four times greater than salt marshes. But mangroves can also drown. Neither salt marshes nor mangroves have survived a centenary sea-level increase of 100 cm.

 

How India’s coastal forests could become a goldmine
 

 INDIA – They lack the solemnity of a banyan tree and the stature of a deodar, but mangroves are second to none in the fight against climate change. Be it the Sundarbans in Bengal or the Gulf of Kachchh mangroves in Gujarat, they have been soaking up carbon dioxide with about five times the efficiency of terrestrial trees. That’s because they absorb this greenhouse gas from both the ground and the air with their aerial roots. Recognising the importance of mangroves, the Centre had announced the Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) scheme in this year’s Budget. Under the scheme, mangroves will be planted along India’s coasts and on salt pan lands. However, experts say the scheme’s success will depend on focused surveys to understand the mangrove ecosystems. Recognising the importance of mangroves, the Centre had announced the Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) scheme in this year’s Budget. Under the scheme, mangroves will be planted along India’s coasts and on salt pan lands. However, experts say the scheme’s success will depend on focused surveys to understand the mangrove ecosystems. “Conservation, plantation, and restoration of mangroves need to be sped up,” says Kathiresan Kandasamy , former director and honorary professor of the Department of Marine Science at Annamalai University. 

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Cross-sectional research into mangrove blue carbon: A tale from two islands

  

KOREA – The Indo-West Pacific Region, which includes East Asia, hosts the most diverse mangrove ecosystems in the world. Their distribution area is gradually expanding, and migrating, owing to climate change. To better understand this phenomenon and learn how to maintain healthy mangrove systems, researchers with the National Institute of Forest Science (NIFoS) in the Republic of Korea have been working with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency and Udayana University in Denpasar, Bali Province. The Korean Peninsula is in the northernmost sub-tropical climate zone. Two species of semi-mangrove trees grow there, including on the southernmost Jeju Island, and their range has been expanding incrementally as temperatures increase, indicating potential for true mangroves to be established in Korea. The island of Bali in Indonesia is home to healthy sites of planted and extant mangrove forests, particularly, the 1373 hectares (ha) of the I Ngurah Rai Great Forest Park near the international airport. “Conservation and restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems is a promising approach to address climate change,” said Ni Luh Watiniasih, Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Udayana University. 

 

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‘I was born here, and I will die here’: Mangrove-planting is helping this man save his flooded home
 

INDIA – Sea level rise and severe tidal floods are forcing residents of India’s Vypin Island to relocate to higher ground. “The floods are occurring more frequently and lasting longer,” says T P Murukesan, who lives on the low-lying island of India’s western coast. The last flood was chest-height for his young grandson. “Every flood brings waters this high, we just deal with it.” In his raised home, white paint peels off the damp walls. But the retired fisherman has almost single handedly been buffering the impacts of the rising waters in his community. Known locally as ‘Mangrove Man’, Murukesan has turned to planting the trees along the receding shores of Vypin in the Kochi region of Kerala state. Murukesan says he has planted over 100,000 mangroves. He plants saplings on alternate days and does most of the work himself. The mangroves he planted in and around the area in 2014 have grown into a dense thicket and are helping reduce the intensity of tidal flooding, he says. Some help comes in the form of saplings from the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, a non-government organisation based in Chennai, India. 

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Feature Video

 

Will Charouhis – A Million Mangroves

 

 Meet Will Charouhis, founder of We are Forces of Nature, a nonprofit combating climate change and protecting coastlines through initiatives like A Million Mangroves. Despite the challenges of planting mangroves, Will’s perseverance has led to over 1,000 seedlings being planted in the past two years. As he continues field research to improve seedling growth, he encourages all to join the fight against climate change.
 

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