Monitoring temporal changes in coastal mangroves to understand the impacts of climate change: Red Sea, Egypt

Abstract

This paper focuses on the current state of mangroves in Egypt, analyses how climate change is affecting mangrove forests and suggests a conservation strategy to safeguard this valuable maritime resource. Mangroves in Egypt are primarily found in regions around the Red Sea, making them popular for ecotourism across the globe. A crucial breeding and feeding ground for many commercial fishery species, mangroves are a maritime habitat that is both economically and environmentally significant and a variety of living things call them home. Mangroves are one of the most threatened tropical and subtropical ecoregions in the world. These threats come from both natural and human sources, including oil spills, human waste runoff, herbicide use, and coastal development, all of which have the potential to harm the environment. Mangrove habitats are immediately impacted by salinity changes and rising sea levels brought on by climate change. This is unfortunate as mangroves are one of the most important global carbon sinks, and their loss due to climate change may accelerate sea level rise and ocean acidification, which will cause the extinction of numerous commercial fish species. A conservation strategy should be implemented to safeguard the mangroves around the Egyptian Red Sea by using mitigation techniques, creating marine protected zones near the mangroves, and consulting the owners of the mangrove stalks. Analysis of multi-temporal satellite imagery is one of the most significant methods to assist decision-makers and environmental planners in obtaining high-precision information about environmental and climatic changes. Analysis of satellite imagery is a valuable way to detect, monitor, assess and map the environmental, human, and natural activities that are threatening the growth of the mangrove forest ecosystem. Change detection analyses using satellite imagery were conducted to evaluate the effects of rapid coastal sustainable development, including human urban and tourism activities; the decline and destruction of large areas of the mangrove forest for animal feeding along camel trade roads; and the threat of natural impacts such as flash flooding, coastal and soil erosion or human impacts such as established desalination plants and other human activities along the coastal zone of the Egyptian Red Sea.