Mangroves are coastal tropical forests that thrive in the brackish zone between the land and sea. This zone is made up of uniquely adapted, saltwater tolerant trees and shrubs. They provide essential support to healthy marine ecosystems by trapping sediments and providing nutrients to nearby coastal sea grass beds and coral reefs.
In Australia, which is home to 7 % of the worlds mangroves, researchers believe that warming waters may be the reason for a massive die off of large areas of mangroves, specifically the Grey Mangrove, in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Mangroves take in 50 times more carbon than tropical forests by area. Hundreds of miles of mangroves along the coast of Karumba have turned a ghostly white. This event is being compared to the horrific coral bleaching event taking place on the Great Barrier Reef.
Professor Norm Duke from Queensland's James Cook University, a mangrove ecologist, recently stated that the die off appears to have coincided with hot water in the nearby southern Gulf Country ecosystem.
ABC News Australia reports:
"I'm speaking ahead of the evidence so I have to be really cautious, but I do want to draw attention to this because we need more capability to respond and find out more about what's going on."
He raised serious concerns about the situation which he compared to coral bleaching happening on the Great Barrier Reef, which is the result of warmer ocean temperatures.
"We don't have any firm data on the ground to confirm the full magnitude of what's going on.
"We're getting indications from what we can see on satellite imagery and also from people like fishermen, local residents, miners who are working in the area, that there's this massive incident of die-back of a large area along our shorelines.''
Mangroves are threatened throughout the world by human activity and they provide critical protections against climate change even as they are threatened by climate change.
World Bank Group-WAVES reports:
Mangroves as Protection from Storm Surges in a Changing Climate quantifies the coastal protection provided by mangroves for 42 developing countries in the current climate, and under a future climate change scenario with a one-meter sea level rise and a 10 percent intensification of storms.
The findings show that although sea level rise and increased storm intensity would increase storm surge areas putting built infrastructure at risk, the greatest impact is the expected loss of mangroves.
Under current climate and mangrove coverage, 3.5 million people and GDP worth roughly $400 million are at risk. Under the future impacts of climate change the paper says the population at risk more than doubles, and GDP at risk increases nearly three-fold.
The greatest risk is in East Asia, especially in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar.
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