The state of the world’s mangroves in the 21st century under climate change

Hydrobiologia, Sep 2017

Concerted mangrove research and rehabilitation efforts over the last several decades have prompted a better understanding of the important ecosystem attributes worthy of protection and a better conservation ethic toward mangrove wetlands globally. While mangroves continue to be degraded and lost in specific regions, conservation initiatives, rehabilitation efforts, natural regeneration, and climate range expansion have promoted gains in other areas, ultimately serving to curb the high mangrove habitat loss statistics from the doom and gloom of the 1980s. We highlight those trends in this article and introduce this special issue of Hydrobiologia dedicated to the important and recurring Mangrove and Macrobenthos Meeting. This collection of papers represents studies presented at the fourth such meeting (MMM4) held in St. Augustine, Florida, USA, on July 18–22, 2016. Our intent is to provide a balanced message about the global state of mangrove wetlands by describing recent reductions in net mangrove area losses and highlighting primary research studies presented at MMM4 through a collection of papers. These papers serve not only to highlight on-going global research advancements, but also provide an overview of the vast amount of data on mangrove ecosystem ecology, biology and rehabilitation that emphasizes the uniqueness of the mangrove community.

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The state of the world’s mangroves in the 21st century under climate change

The state of the world's mangroves in the 21st century under climate change Ilka C. Feller 0 1 2 3 4 0 D. A. Friess Department of Geography, National University of Singapore , 1 Arts Link , Singapore 117570 , Singapore 1 I. C. Feller (&) Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center , 647 Contees Wharf Road, Edgewater, MD 21037 , USA 2 Guest editors: K. W. Krauss, I. C. Feller, D. A. Friess, R. R. Lewis III / Causes and Consequences of Mangrove Ecosystem Responses to an Ever-Changing Climate 3 R. R. Lewis III Lewis Environmental Services, Inc. , P.O. Box 5430, Salt Springs, FL 32134 , USA 4 K. W. Krauss U.S. Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center , 700 Cajundome Blvd., Lafayette, LA 70506 , USA Concerted mangrove research and rehabilitation efforts over the last several decades have prompted a better understanding of the important ecosystem attributes worthy of protection and a better conservation ethic toward mangrove wetlands globally. While mangroves continue to be degraded and lost in specific regions, conservation initiatives, rehabilitation efforts, natural regeneration, and climate range expansion have promoted gains in other areas, ultimately serving to curb the high mangrove habitat loss statistics from the doom and gloom of the 1980s. We highlight those trends in this article and introduce this special issue of Hydrobiologia dedicated to the important and recurring Mangrove and Macrobenthos Meeting. This collection of papers represents studies presented at the fourth such meeting (MMM4) held in St. Augustine, Florida, USA, on July 18-22, 2016. Our intent is to provide a balanced message about the global state of mangrove wetlands by describing recent reductions in net mangrove area losses and highlighting primary research studies presented at MMM4 through a collection of papers. These papers serve not only to highlight on-going global research advancements, but also provide an overview of the vast amount of data on mangrove ecosystem ecology, biology and rehabilitation that emphasizes the uniqueness of the mangrove community. Biology; Deforestation; Extent; Mangrove expansion; Restoration; Sea-level rise Introduction Tropical and sub-tropical mangrove forests are considered a particularly important ecosystem for human coastal communities due to their provision of ecosystem services, such as timber and fuelwood (Palacios & Cantera, 2017) , fisheries (Benzeev et al., 2017; Goecke & Carstenn, 2017) , sediment trapping (Kamal et al., 2017) , coastal defense (Doughty et al., 2017; Sheng & Zou, 2017) , and carbon storage (Donato et al., 2011; Kelleway et al., 2016; Yando et al., 2016) . Nevertheless, mangrove forests are considered one of the most threatened ecosystems across the tropics (Duke et al., 2007). This is due in large part to anthropogenic impacts on mangroves, including conversion to aquaculture and agriculture, urbanization, and pollution (UNEP, 2014) . As a transitional intertidal ecosystem, mangrove forests are also considered to be particularly vulnerable to climate change stressors, such as sea-level rise (Lovelock et al., 2015) and drought (Duke et al., 2017) , where changing environmental conditions push mangroves beyond speciesspecific thresholds of tolerance (Ball, 1988) . Mangrove loss may not always be attributable to a single driver like agriculture; instead, many natural and anthropogenic stressors often interact additively or synergistically, leading to rapid and large-scale dieoffs in some locales, exemplified by recent (2016) events in Australia (Duke et al., 2017; Lovelock et al., 2017a) . Whereas the general trend for mangroves across the tropics and sub-tropics is one of decline, the broader picture of the true state of the world’s mangroves is more nuanced and complex. Huge efforts are being put into mangrove rehabilitation and creation at landscape scales. While such large-scale efforts are generally unsuccessful due to poor species selection, inappropriate choice of rehabilitation locations, and local governance issues (Lewis, 2005; Primavera & Esteban, 2008; Elliott et al., 2016; Kodikara et al., 2017) , some efforts are becoming more successful as elements of species biology and hydrological requirements are incorporated into the design and implementation of rehabilitation projects (e.g., Matsui et al., 2010; Oh et al., 2017) . On a larger scale, climate change may promote some positive gains, especially at the northern and southern latitudinal limits of mangroves, as mangroves encroach on and replace saltmarsh species in some localities, which was a major theme of the 4th Mangrove and Macrobenthos Meeting (MMM4) held in St. Augustine, Florida in 2016. The aim of this article is first to describe the MMM4 conference that was held in 2016 and its focus, and then to assess the true state of the world’s mangroves early in the 21st century, including some of the potentially positive messages discussed du (...truncated)


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Ilka C. Feller, Daniel A. Friess, Ken W. Krauss, Roy R. Lewis III. The state of the world’s mangroves in the 21st century under climate change, Hydrobiologia, 2017, pp. 1-12, DOI: 10.1007/s10750-017-3331-z