What better way to kick off the new year than another fantastic EEO-AGIS seminar!
Our next speaker will be Dr Pete Bunting from Aberystwyth University who will be talking about the great work that he and the Global Mangrove Watch team have been doing over the last 9 years to map and monitor mangroves worldwide. This is an ambitious project that uses satellite data to map mangrove extents to high resolution and assess historical change back to 1985 to better understand the condition of a vital global ecosystem.
The seminar will take place at 5pm Wednesday 21st Jan at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute Skills and Training room (High School Yards, EH1 1LZ), followed by the usual networking and drinks at Ox184 in the Cowgate.
Looking forward to see you there.
Speaker: Pete Bunting, Aberystwyth University
Title: Global Mangrove Watch: Monitoring Mangrove Extent and Change
Abstract:
The Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) team has produced several global mangrove extent and change products over the past 9 years (Bunting et al., 2018, 2022a,b, 2023), with each update improving the mapping methodology and product accuracy. The latest version 4.0 GMW products have a significantly revised and improved methodology, resulting in greater map accuracy. Improvements include a new 2020 baseline with a spatial resolution of 10 m and annual change products extending to 1985 (previously 1996) at 30 m.
The primary aim of GMW v.4.0 has been to improve the local relevance of the products. To achieve this aim, the new GMW v4.0 baseline map for 2020 has a spatial resolution of 10 m and the historical change layers are now produced using a combination of Landsat and JAXA L-band SAR data to generate annual extent maps from 1985 to 2025.
The average global mangrove extent in the GMW v4.0 timeseries is 154,811 km2, with a range of 152,000-158,000 km2 over the timeseries. The new v4.0 timeseries has mapped substantial gains in mangrove extent in regions such as India, China, and the Middle East, which are offsetting many of the significant losses resulting from the conversion of mangroves to other land covers, such as aquaculture ponds or rice paddies. However, caution is needed in interpreting these results, as the gain in many regions is likely due to sedimentation from the land and may therefore reflect degradation of the terrestrial landscape.