Analysis of relationship between the meteorological and hydrological droughts and biomass change of mangrove forests in the Gwatr Port over a 34-year period

Document Type : Scientific article

Authors

1 Assistant Prof., Department of Forest Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources and Earth Sciences, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran

2 Assistant Prof., Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The analysis of changes in mangrove forests production capacity and its relation to the drought periods can provide valuable information on the vulnerability of these ecosystems to the adverse effects of climate change. This study investigates the effect of long-term drought occurrences on the production capacity of the mangrove forests in the Gwatr Port in the Sistan and Baluchestan province. To do this, by recording the diameter at breast height and calculating the above and below ground biomass in the sample plots and analyzing the relationship between these characteristics with the Landsat satellite images, 34-year time series (1986-2019) mangrove biomass were mapped and the relationship between biomass variations and changes in meteorological drought (measured using SPI) and hydrological drought (measured using SSFI) was analyzed. The results showed that the above and below ground biomasses follows the trends of change in the severity of meteorological and hydrological droughts during the 34-year period such that in the wet season before 1998, mangrove biodiversity increased, and then with long-term droughts after 1998, the decline in biomass continued until the end of the period. The coincidence between biomass changes and SPI and SSFI variations resulted in a high correlation between mangrove biomass variations with changes in the severity of meteorological and hydrological droughts (correlation coefficients greater than 0.82). The results of this study can be used for developing climate change adaptation programs and for the restoration and development of mangrove forests in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

Keywords

References

- Alongi, D.M., 2015. The impact of climate change on mangrove forests. Current Climate Change Reports, 1(1): 30-39.
- Armitage, A.R., Highfield, W.E., Brody, S.D. and Louchouarn, P., 2015. The contribution of mangrove expansion to salt marsh loss on the Texas Gulf Coast. PLoS One, 10(5): e0125404.
- Binelli, A., Sarkar, S.K., Chatterjee, M., Riva, C., Parolini, M., deb Bhattacharya, B., … and Satpathy, K.K., 2007. Concentration of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in sediment cores of Sundarban mangrove wetland, northeastern part of Bay of Bengal (India). Marine Pollution Bulletin, 54(8): 1220-1229.
- Duke, N. C., Kovacs, J. M., Griffiths, A. D., Preece, L., Hill, D. J., Van Oosterzee, P., ... and Burrows, D., 2017. Large-scale dieback of mangroves in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria: a severe ecosystem response, coincidental with an unusually extreme weather event. Marine and Freshwater Research, 68(10): 1816-1829.
- Duke, N.C., Meynecke, J.O., Dittmann, S., Ellison, A.M., Anger, K., Berger, U., … and Dahdouh-Guebas, F., 2007. A world without mangroves?. Science, 317(5834): 41-42.
- Ellison, A.M., 2000. Mangrove restoration: do we know enough?. Restoration Ecology, 8(3): 219-229.
- Eslami-Andargoli, L., Dale, P. and Sipe, N., 2013. Does spatial scale affect the pattern of mangrove change under different rainfall regimes? An example in southeast Queensland, Australia. Austral Ecology, 38(2): 208-218.
- Eslami-Andargoli, L., Dale, P.E.R., Sipe, N. and Chaseling, J., 2009. Mangrove expansion and rainfall patterns in Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, Australia. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 85(2): 292-298.
- Etemadi, H., Samadi, S.Z., Sharifikia, M. and Smoak, J.M., 2016. Assessment of climate change downscaling and non-stationarity on the spatial pattern of a mangrove ecosystem in an arid coastal region of southern Iran. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 126(1-2): 35-49.
- Fernández, C., Vega, J.A., Fonturbel, T. and Jiménez, E., 2009. Streamflow drought time series forecasting: a case study in a small watershed in North West Spain. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 23(8): 1063.
- Field, C.D., 1995. Impact of expected climate change on mangroves. Hydrobiologia, 295: 75-81.
- Friess, D.A., Rogers, K., Lovelock, C.E., Krauss, K.W., Hamilton, S.E., Lee, S.Y., … and Shi, S., 2019. The state of the world's mangrove forests: past, present, and future. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 44: 89-115.
- Gabler, C.A., Osland, M.J., Grace, J.B., Stagg, C.L., Day, R.H., Hartley, S.B., … and McLeod, J.L., 2017. Macroclimatic change expected to transform coastal wetland ecosystems this century. Nature Climate Change, 7(2): 142-147.
- Gilman, E.L., Ellison, J., Duke, N.C. and Field, C., 2008. Threats to mangroves from climate change and adaptation options. Aquatic Botany, 89(2): 237-250.
- Krauss, K.W., Lovelock, C.E., McKee, K.L., López-Hoffman, L., Ewe, S.M.L. and Sousa, W.P., 2008. Environmental drivers in mangrove establishment and early development: a review. Aquatic Botany, 89(2): 105-127.
- Lovelock, C.E. and Ellison, J., 2007. Chapter 9: Vulnerability of mangroves and tidal wetlands of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change: 237-269. In: Johnson, J.E. and Marshall, P.A. (Eds.). Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef: A Vulnerability Assessment. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Australian Greenhouse Office, Townsville, Australia, 818p.
- Mafi-Gholami, D., Mahmoudi, B. and Zenner, E.K., 2017. An analysis of the relationship between drought events and mangrove changes along the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 199: 141-151.
- Mafi-Gholami, D., Zenner, E.K. and Jaafari, A., 2020. Mangrove regional feedback to sea level rise and drought intensity at the end of the 21st century. Ecological Indicators, 110: 105972.
- Mafi-Gholami, D., Zenner, E.K., Jaafari, A. and Ward, R.D., 2019. Modeling multi-decadal mangrove leaf area index in response to drought along the semi-arid southern coasts of Iran. Science of the Total Environment, 656: 1326-1336.
- McKee, T.B., Doesken, N.J. and Kleist, J., 1993. The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology. Anaheim, California, 17-22 Jan. 1993: 179-184.
- Modarres, R., 2007. Streamflow drought time series forecasting. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 21(3): 223-233.
- Normille, N., 2016. Survey confirms worst-ever coral bleaching at Great Barrier Reef. Science. Available at: https://www.‌sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/survey-confirms-worst-ever-coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef.
- Osland, M.J., Feher, L.C., Griffith, K.T., Cavanaugh, K.C., Enwright, N.M., Day, R.H., … and Rogers, K., 2017. Climatic controls on the global distribution, abundance, and species richness of mangrove forests. Ecological Monographs, 87(2): 341-359.
- Powell, S.L., Cohen, W.B., Healey, S.P., Kennedy, R.E., Moisen, G.G., Pierce, K.B. and Ohmann, J.L., 2010. Quantification of live aboveground forest biomass dynamics with Landsat time-series and field inventory data: A comparison of empirical modeling approaches. Remote Sensing of Environment, 114(5): 1053-1068.
- Safiari, Sh., 2017. Mangrove forests of Iran. Nature of Iran, 2(2): 49-57 (In Persian).
- Schile, L.M., Kauffman, J.B., Crooks, S., Fourqurean, J.W., Glavan, J. and Megonigal, J.P., 2017. Limits on carbon sequestration in arid blue carbon ecosystems. Ecological Applications, 27(3): 859-874.
- Snedaker, S.C., 1995. Mangroves and climate change in the Florida and Caribbean region: scenarios and hypotheses. Hydrobiologia, 295(1-3): 43-49.
- Solomon, S., Qin, D. and Manning, M., 2007. Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 92p.
- Szulejko, J.E., Kumar, P., Deep, A. and Kim, K.H., 2017. Global warming projections to 2100 using simple CO2 greenhouse gas modeling and comments on CO2 climate sensitivity factor. Atmospheric Pollution Research, 8(1): 136-140.
- Wu, H., Hayes, M.J., Weiss, A. and Hu, Q., 2001. An evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index, the China-Z Index and the statistical Z-Score. International Journal of Climatology, 21(6): 745-758.
Iranian Journal of Forest and Poplar Research
Volume 28, Issue 2 - Serial Number 80
September 2020
Pages 149-162

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics