Ecosystem Services of Mangroves: A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Contemporary Scientific Literature

Background

Mangroves provide many ecosystem services, such as breeding grounds for aquatic organisms, sediment accumulation sites, coastal protection, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. Beyond ecological functions, mangroves also sustain coastal livelihoods by providing natural resources and contributing to local economies. However, anthropogenic pressures from coastal development, agriculture, and aquaculture degrade mangrove ecosystems and the important ecosystem services they provide. Therefore, it is important to quantify and describe mangrove ecosystem services to better inform coastal policymakers and managers interested in mangrove conservation.

Goals and Methods

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of papers published after 2000 that focus on mangrove ecosystem services, using the Scopus database to find papers and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for screening. For the analysis, the authors extracted information from the articles and categorized the articles’ ecosystem services into one of the four categories from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (i.e., provisioning, regulating, supporting, cultural services). Further analysis included evaluating linkages between ecosystem services and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mapping the distribution of sites from the articles, a bibliometric network analysis to assess trends and interlinkages between papers, and a Spearman’s rank correlation test to assess correlations between categories of ecosystem services.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Regulating ecosystem services (i.e., carbon storage, coastal protection) are the most represented, likely due to increased awareness of climate change and a series of major tropical storms in the early 2000s, whereas cultural ecosystem services (i.e., aesthetic value, cultural amenities, education) were hardly referenced until the 2010s. Generally, the most frequently cited ecosystem services are carbon storage, coastal protection, nursery areas and breeding grounds, and habitat for terrestrial and marine fauna. The ecosystem services within these papers most directly related to SDGs 12 (responsible consumption and production), 13 (climate action), 14 (life below water), and 15 (life on land), although the authors argue that many of these ecosystem services indirectly benefit other SDGs. There are also synergies (i.e., coastal protection and carbon storage) and trade-offs (i.e., freshwater supply and water transport) between different combinations of ecosystem services, showing how analyzing and categorizing ecosystem services could help to inform mangrove conservation and management.