It is fact that swampy mangrove forests – essential breeding grounds for fish and shellfish in these countries – are being destroyed by worsening pollution, encroaching real estate development, and deforestation necessary to sustain large-scale commercial shrimp farming. Growing up in Cotonou, Benin, environmental scientist Lola Fatoyinbo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) passed polluted mangroves daily.
She has journeyed along the coastlines to test a new satellite technique for measuring the area, height, and biomass of mangrove forests. She developed and employed a method that can be used across the continent, overcoming expensive, ad hoc, and inconsistent modes of ground-based measurement. Fatoyinbo’s approach recently produced what she believes is the first full assessment of the continent’s mangrove forests.
Fatoyinbo, whose earlier study of Mozambique’s coastal forests laid the groundwork for the continent-wide study, said that this technique will, hopefully, offer scientists and officials a method of estimating change in this special type of forest. Mangroves are the most common ecosystem in coastal areas of the tropics and sub-tropics. The swampy forests are essential — especially in densely-populated developing countries — for rice farming, fishing and aquaculture (freshwater and saltwater farming), timber, and firewood.
Some governments also increasingly depend on them for eco-tourism.
The large, dense root systems are a natural obstacle that helps protect shorelines against debris and erosion. Assaf Anyamba, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County, told that to my knowledge, this study is the first complete mapping of Africa’s mangroves, a comprehensive, historic baseline enabling us to truly begin monitoring the welfare of these forests.
Fatoyinbo’s research combines multiple satellite observations of tree height and land cover, mathematical formulas, and “ground-truthing” data from the field to measure the full expanse and makeup of the coastal forests.
