Climate change and the future of mangroves

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Biology - Ecology, grade: 1,0, University of Bremen (Zentrum für Marine Tropenökologie (ZMT)), language: English, abstract: Mangrove forests are severely endangered by human impacts all over the world. Extended destructions and degradations are results that can be observed. Besides overexploitation and destructive use, the global change is an increasing problem for mangrove systems. This includes phenomena like sea level rise, global warming and an increase in storms and hurricanes. Although previous developments show that mangroves always had to deal with changes in climate and sea level fluctuation and that they are able to adapt with biological properties or changes in distribution, the human accelerated climate change seem to be to fast for a natural response. Therefore a management plan has to be implemented to give mangrove forests the chance to migrate landwards or to compensate changes in composition or destructive events. Management plans should be concentrated on protection and restoration and the inclusion of connected systems. Above that, a sustainable use should be a major aspect for management to maintain or reach a resilient system. Furthermore the participation of local people is very important in this context especially if they depend economically on mangroves (SAENGER 2002). In the end decisions have to be made which sites are worth to protect and which ones are suitable to be restored because of their chances to survive the global change. After McLeod and Salm (2006) questions like if landward migration is possible or if peat accretion keep pace with sea level rise may help for management decisions. This essay will provide an introduction to some selected impacts and an overview about strategies in management to outline the severe endangering of mangrove forests.