Project Funding: 2011 - 2014

NRA: 2010 NASA: Carbon Cycle Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Mangroves are complex ecosystems providing a variety of ecosystem services including storm protection, fisheries resources, influences on water quality and a significant global C sink. Recent work by the PIs have found that the C pools of mangroves are among the highest in the world. Further, rates of deforestation and land cover change of mangroves are the highest of any forest cover type in the Asia Pacific. Yet, no comprehensive studies exist to quantify C losses as well as the declines of other ecosystem services associated with land use/land cover change of mangroves in Asia. The Sundarbans is the world’s largest single block of mangrove forest, covering approximately 10,000 km2 of the Ganges delta along the coastal areas of India and Bangladesh. It is the home of a remarkable array of biodiversity including the Bengal Tiger, Ganges River dolphin, Saltwater crocodile, and hundreds of species of birds and mammals. It is also sustainably utilized by millions of people but threats from both land cover change and climate change threaten this sustainability. Sea-level rise, increases in number and severity of cyclones and alteration of water flows from the Himalayan headwaters are global change influences of concern. Sea level rise alone is predicted to potentially displace as many as 35 million people in the region by the middle of the 21st century. Land cover change may strongly interact with climate change to affect sustainability, function as a global carbon sink, and regional biodiversity of the coastal regions of tropical Asia. Despite the values and vulnerability of the mangroves of the India/Bangladesh coastal region, very little data exist, or have been collected, on the spatial and temporal distribution of above and belowground carbon pools, their dynamics, and the impacts of anthropogenic and natural disturbances on this vulnerable ecosystem. We propose to assess and map the existing carbon stocks of the Sundarbans by a combined use of optical, radar, and lidar remotely sensed data with ground-based and modeling studies of biomass and carbon dynamics of land use/land cover change. We will explore the impacts of disturbances on the carbon pools and ecosystem services provided by these mangroves, and produce historic maps of their coverage as well as carbon loss. Using predictive modeling we also plan to produce future scenarios of vulnerability maps and adaptive capacity metrics of Sundarbans and the adjacent coastal areas of the Ganges/Brahmaputra delta.

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Monitoring coastal wetlands and near shore aquatic environments in response to the BP Horizon oil spill   --   (Susan L. Ustin, Shruti Khanna, Alexander Koltunov, Dar Alexander Roberts, Raymond Kokaly)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Ocean Biology & Biogeochemistry (OBB) Project Profile