Playing “Down and Dirty” with Ocean Mangrove Mud
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| Dominican Republic Los Haitises Mangroves |
"There is just something about playing with mud, which makes you feel primal. Rubbing big globs of greasy, coarse-grained earth batter in your hands, letting it ooze through your fingers as you squeeze it into an amorphous ball—just the thought of such a messy act seems verboten," Ben wrote out.
"There was certainly a lot of mud to play with when our SEE Turtles group headed to last’s mangrove restoration project to volunteer with planting for a day," the volunteer working and reporting for Ocean Foundation stated.
The approach of the Ocean Foundation organization is to “get up and close to” work small scale in the importance of mangrove forests and their role for maintaining a healthy, functioning coastal ecosystem.
"Not only do they serve as critical habitat for a wide variety of animals, but they also play a significant role in nutrient cycling, and act as nurseries for young fauna like fish, birds, and crustaceans. Mangroves are also the best form of shoreline protection. Their tangled roots and buttress trunks minimize erosion from waves and water movement, in addition to trapping sediments, which reduces the turbidity of coastal waters and maintains a stable shoreline," the organzation reveals.
Other organisations have a different approach and different resrouces, NASA is mapping out the South Asia Mangroves. Mangroves can be found in over 118 countries and territories throuhgout the world. Approximately 75% of world’s mangroves are found in just 15 countries. Asia has the largest amount 42% and that is where NASA is focusing. Africa follows with 21%, North/Central America with 15%, Oceania with 12% and South America with 11%. The retreat of mangrove forests and world status of the loss of environment is to the date issue of investigation.
NASA explains that along the sea’s edge in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the dense coastal population lives largely in symbiosis with the region’s mangrove forests. The reigons are known for being extremlñey sensible to storms leading to massive floods.
In a recent study Chandra Giri and colleagues used LANDSAT satellite data to map South Asia’s mangrove forests and to calculate how they forests have changed over the dozen years spanning between 2000–2012.
“LANDSAT is an appropriate scale to map and monitor mangroves in large areas such as South Asia because of mangrove patch size and configuration,” Giri explains. “Additionally, free data availability and global coverage provides an opportunity to acquire and use cloud free images.”
Mangroves are gaining international press presence for their role in the protection of shore lines and lives against natural disasters such as the Yolanda storm, considered as a "must keep" environment element when developing urban shorelines in Asia and other regions of the world, praised for their habvitlity to store carbon and even protect corals from climate change among other natural habilities.
Conservation Gateway –aslo playing down and dirty released the new Paper "Mangroves for coastal defence. Guidelines for coastal managers & policy makers". The organization which teams up with the Nature Conservancy stresses that despite the "role of mangroves in protecting our coasts against natural hazards such as storms, tsunamis and coastal erosion has been widely acknowledged" ..."the level of protection provided by mangroves remains subject to debate".
Can mangroves reduce waves and storm surges? How will they influence the forces of a tsunami? Do they actually contribute to stabilizing coasts and build-up of soils? Can they keep up with sea level rise?
The Nature Conservancy and Wetlands International together with the University of Cambridge set out to map the current state of knowledge about the role of mangroves in coastal defence and put the different findings and views in perspective.
Approximately 35% of mangrove area was lost during the last several decades of the XX Century. Today experts assure that data and investigation is required and priority. The largest loss of mangrove environment is without a doubt unplanned and unsustainble coastal development.
"Yet, despite the many benefits mangrove wetlands provide, they are too-often the victims of coastal development. Bordering nearly three quarters of the margins of tropical coastlines around the world, mangrove forests have been destroyed at an alarming rate to make room for tourist resorts, shrimp farms, and industry," The Ocean Foundation states.
Ocean Foundation speaks about the retroactive negative cycle in which mangroves are trapped. Loss of Mangrove environment translates to less buffer zones when natural disasters hit the region, in turn natural disasters cause massive mangrove environment devastation and the cycle continues,
Ocean Foundation highlighted the case of Honduras when Hurricane Mitch wiped out 95% of all mangroves on Guanaja Island in 1998.
Mangroves are on the front line of biological combat against climate change, they fortify shorelines and sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide. Where some may see potential for the "blue carbon" markets other see sheer natural beauty and a complex marine matrix capable like few other plant kingdom representatives to adapt to salt and freshwater conditions, home intrinsic food webs and protect lives in the process.
"The Ocean Foundation’s fiscally sponsored project, Guanaja Mangrove Restoration Project, has replanted over 200,000 red mangroves propagules, with plans to plant the same number of white and black mangroves in the coming years to ensure forest diversity and resiliency," the organzation that is not afraid of getting their hands dirty and into the mud states.
"Spending the morning in the dirt packing bags with mud and planting mangrove seeds gave me that feeling. It was dirty. It was fun. It was even a little bit primeval. But, above all, it just felt real. And if planting mangroves is a part of a winning global strategy to save our coasts and the planet...." Ocean Foundation representative still has much to voice out.
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