Journal Articles

A historical analysis of the drivers of loss and degradation of Indonesia’s mangroves

Background

Indonesia is an important global hotspot for mangroves, with Indonesia containing over 20% of the world’smangroves. Low-lying mangrove areas are important for shrimp farming in Indonesia, both for local and international markets, which has led to mangrove deforestation and complex mangrove land-use governance. To develop more sustainable mangrove management strategies, it is important to assess Indonesia’s history of mangrove management to understand the main drivers of deforestation. 

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Mapping tropical forest degradation with deep learning and Planet NICFI data

Background

Forest degradation, driven by logging, fire, and infrastructure expansion, represents a major yet under-detected source of carbon emissions in tropical forests. Unlike deforestation, degradation involves partial canopy loss and is difficult to capture using conventional remote sensing due to small-scale disturbances and rapid vegetation recovery. Existing global products often underestimate degradation or fail to attribute its causes. Advances in high-resolution satellite imagery and deep learning provide new opportunities to improve detection accuracy.

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DETER-R: An Operational Near-Real Time Tropical Forest Disturbance Warning System Based on Sentinel-1 Time Series Analysis

Background

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A Water Quality Evaluation of Integrated Mangrove Aquaculture System for Water Treatment in Super-Intensive White Leg Shrimp Pond

Background

White leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) farming is an integral part of Indonesia’s international market. Economic pressure to expand white leg shrimp aquaculture ponds leads to deforestation and degradation of mangroves. However, integrating shrimp aquaculture with mangroves can be a way to improve pond sustainability and environmental quality, especially in super-intensive aquaculture systems, which are highly controlled, technology-based aquaculture ponds that have high stocking densities to maximize shrimp yields.

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Integrated mangrove-shrimp cultivation: Potential for blue carbon sequestration

Background

Mangrove deforestation and degradation have increased due to the growth of shrimp farming in tropical coastal environments. This has serious implications for global climate change mitigation, since mangroves are the most carbon-rich forests in the tropics, and converting mangroves into aquaculture ponds increases blue carbon emissions. Integrated mangrove-shrimp cultivation systems can help to prevent mangrove loss and curb blue carbon emissions through pairing shrimp aquaculture with mangrove restoration.

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Exploring environmental condition of silvofishery pond to support the sustainability of mangrove management in Berau Regency, Indonesia

Background

On the islands of Kalimantan and Sulawesi, Indonesia, mangroves are threatened by conversion into brackish water aquaculture ponds. To combat mangrove deforestation, government ministries and academia have promoted silvofishery ponds as a method of sustainably combining fish or shrimp aquaculture with mangrove restoration and protection. Understanding the biotic and abiotic factors impacting silvofishery ponds is important to inform management decisions and increase support for silvofishery ponds.

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Effects of different management regimes on mangrove ecosystem services in Java, Indonesia

Background

Indonesia’s mangrove forests have decreased from 4.5 million hectares (ha) to under 3 million ha since the 1980s, largely due to the lack of monetary value attributed to mangrove ecosystem services, leading to conversion into aquaculture. Developing a valuation system for mangroves that includes both economically valuable products (i.e., timber, food) and ecosystem services allows decision makers to better assess the impacts of management decisions on the important ecosystem services and properties provided by mangroves.

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Integrated mangrove aquaculture: The sustainable choice for mangroves and aquaculture?

Background

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Conservation for production? The benefits of mangroves for sustainable shrimp aquaculture

Background

Increasing shrimp demand and declining annual shrimp harvests threaten mangroves in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, due to deforestation from shrimp aquaculture expansion. Silvofishery practices that combine shrimp aquaculture with mangrove conservation are promoted to prevent further mangrove deforestation while still protecting the shrimp farming industry. Mangrove ecosystem services are essential for aquaculture systems to thrive, so it is important to determine successful biophysical elements of silvofishery systems to encourage the development of more sustainable aquaculture practices.

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Taking the pulse of Earth’s tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots

Background

Tropical forests play a critical but complex role in global carbon cycling, biodiversity conservation, and climate regulation. These complex dynamics are due to spatial heterogeneity and varying disturbance regimes. Traditional monitoring approaches often rely on remote sensing, which may not capture fine-scale ecological processes. In response, global scientific collaborations have developed extensive forest plot networks to monitor forest structure, biomass, and ecological changes over time. These distributed plots provide high-resolution, ground-based insights into tropical forest conditions across continents.

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