A mangrove forest is a forest made out of trees that grow in
areas where land meets sea.
So these are essentially wetland forests that are only present in
tropical or subtropical regions worldwide. My name is Dr. Lola
Fatoyinbo, and I'm a Research Scientist in the Biospheric
Sciences Lab.
Mangroves are important for a whole number of reasons. They
provide what we call ecosystem services to humans. And some of
those services that they provide are storm surge protections, the
protection from waves and erosion of the coast. They're
also really important for water filtration and for protection of
the coastline.
So in 2017, when Hurricane Irma hit southern Florida, we were
really interested in getting a better idea of how resilient
mangrove forests would be to increasing storm impacts that we
were expecting with changes in climate. We worked with an
airborne instrument suite called G-LiHT. This is the Goddard
LIDAR hyperspectral Thermal instrument, which is a small pod
that has multiple instruments set up together that you can
essentially attached to an airplane. What we found was that
actually, the main cause of permanent die off in mangrove
forests is when you have these really high storm surge that
come in to areas and result in ponding of water in these basin
mangrove areas. So essentially, areas where salt water becomes
stagnant. And when that water becomes stagnant, it gets a
really high concentration of nutrients and the salt, leading
to a permanent die off of these mangrove areas, which is in some
ways becoming a vicious cycle. Because in those areas, because
they're basins, you're not able to grow new mangroves that are
then accumulating more soil. And so you end up with mangroves
dying, the peat collapsing and that peak collapse, not allowing
for new mangroves to come in and resulting in permanent dieoff.
o I think the greatest takeaw y from this study is that ev
n though mangroves are oft n thought of as being real
y resilient and resistant to har h conditions, they are sti
l really vulnerable. And we ne d to make sure that we're able
o maintain the natural conditio s and hydrology that they grow a
d for them to continue to prote t us from these extre
e condition