TY - JOUR
T1 - Drivers of global mangrove loss and gain in social-ecological systems
AU - Hagger, Valerie
AU - Worthington, Thomas A.
AU - Lovelock, Catherine E.
AU - Adame, Maria Fernanda
AU - Amano, Tatsuya
AU - Brown, Benjamin M.
AU - Friess, Daniel A.
AU - Landis, Emily
AU - Mumby, Peter J.
AU - Morrison, Tiffany H.
AU - O'Brien, Katherine R.
AU - Wilson, Kerrie A.
AU - Zganjar, Chris
AU - Saunders, Megan I.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by an Australian Research Council linkage grant (LP170101171) with financial support from The Nature Conservancy and Healthy Land and Water. M.I.S. was supported by a Julius Career Award from CSIRO and acknowledges the Coasts and Ocean Programme ‘Nature-Based Solutions and Restoration’ research domain at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. T.W. was supported by an anonymous gift to The Nature Conservancy. C.L. was supported by an Australian Laureate fellowship (FL200100133).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Mangrove forests store high amounts of carbon, protect communities from storms, and support fisheries. Mangroves exist in complex social-ecological systems, hence identifying socioeconomic conditions associated with decreasing losses and increasing gains remains challenging albeit important. The impact of national governance and conservation policies on mangrove conservation at the landscape-scale has not been assessed to date, nor have the interactions with local economic pressures and biophysical drivers. Here, we assess the relationship between socioeconomic and biophysical variables and mangrove change across coastal geomorphic units worldwide from 1996 to 2016. Globally, we find that drivers of loss can also be drivers of gain, and that drivers have changed over 20 years. The association with economic growth appears to have reversed, shifting from negatively impacting mangroves in the first decade to enabling mangrove expansion in the second decade. Importantly, we find that community forestry is promoting mangrove expansion, whereas conversion to agriculture and aquaculture, often occurring in protected areas, results in high loss. Sustainable development, community forestry, and co-management of protected areas are promising strategies to reverse mangrove losses, increasing the capacity of mangroves to support human-livelihoods and combat climate change.
AB - Mangrove forests store high amounts of carbon, protect communities from storms, and support fisheries. Mangroves exist in complex social-ecological systems, hence identifying socioeconomic conditions associated with decreasing losses and increasing gains remains challenging albeit important. The impact of national governance and conservation policies on mangrove conservation at the landscape-scale has not been assessed to date, nor have the interactions with local economic pressures and biophysical drivers. Here, we assess the relationship between socioeconomic and biophysical variables and mangrove change across coastal geomorphic units worldwide from 1996 to 2016. Globally, we find that drivers of loss can also be drivers of gain, and that drivers have changed over 20 years. The association with economic growth appears to have reversed, shifting from negatively impacting mangroves in the first decade to enabling mangrove expansion in the second decade. Importantly, we find that community forestry is promoting mangrove expansion, whereas conversion to agriculture and aquaculture, often occurring in protected areas, results in high loss. Sustainable development, community forestry, and co-management of protected areas are promising strategies to reverse mangrove losses, increasing the capacity of mangroves to support human-livelihoods and combat climate change.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85140814721&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-022-33962-x
DO - 10.1038/s41467-022-33962-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 36289201
AN - SCOPUS:85140814721
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 13
SP - 6373
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 6373
ER -