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About the Book
The ecosystem services paradigm—the benefits that ecosystems provide to human
populations and society—are now strongly applied to threatened tropical coastal
forest ecosystems, preferably to intertidal mangrove forests that exist at the landsea interface. A huge amount of research is currently focusing on the range of
ecosystem services that mangrove forests provide and their regional distribution.
Mangrove forests have commonly been shown to provide multiple provisioning
services that increase the economic or food security of local communities such as
timber, fuel wood, medicinal and food resources. Regulating services such as wave
attenuation and, more recently, carbon and nitrogen sequestration and storage have
also become important in the contemporary mangrove forest research agenda.
These regulating services are potentially important at very large scales, with carbon storage in Indonesia being so high that mangrove deforestation may account
for as much as 10–31% of all carbon emissions related to the national land cover
change. Mangrove forests also provide a diverse spectrum of cultural ecosystem
services to coastal populations living close to mangrove forests, ranging from the
tangible (tourism, recreation, education) to the abstract (cultural heritage, aesthetics, sense of place). While huge challenges to quantifying and valuing ecosystem
services remain, mangrove forest ecosystem services have been tentatively estimated at an average of US$ 4185 per hectare per year, though substantial spatial
and temporal variation in this figure exists. In Indian subcontinent, the quantitative
picture of ecosystem services of mangroves is still in an embryo stage, although,
with some 34 true mangrove species and a broad range of mangrove associate
floral species, the Indian Sundarbans mangrove system has an impressive presence
in the world mangrove atlas. The present book will not only highlight the ecosystem services of mangroves in a systematic manner but will also present some
important case studies of the recent times on mangrove ecosystem services, which
are still untapped and may serve as road maps for alternative livelihood for coastal
population and island dwellers.
The present book has critically analysed the data bank for each type of mangrove
ecosystem services not merely in the form of text description but also through case
About the Book
The ecosystem services paradigm—the benefits that ecosystems provide to human
populations and society—are now strongly applied to threatened tropical coastal
forest ecosystems, preferably to intertidal mangrove forests that exist at the landsea interface. A huge amount of research is currently focusing on the range of
ecosystem services that mangrove forests provide and their regional distribution.
Mangrove forests have commonly been shown to provide multiple provisioning
services that increase the economic or food security of local communities such as
timber, fuel wood, medicinal and food resources. Regulating services such as wave
attenuation and, more recently, carbon and nitrogen sequestration and storage have
also become important in the contemporary mangrove forest research agenda.
These regulating services are potentially important at very large scales, with carbon storage in Indonesia being so high that mangrove deforestation may account
for as much as 10–31% of all carbon emissions related to the national land cover
change. Mangrove forests also provide a diverse spectrum of cultural ecosystem
services to coastal populations living close to mangrove forests, ranging from the
tangible (tourism, recreation, education) to the abstract (cultural heritage, aesthetics, sense of place). While huge challenges to quantifying and valuing ecosystem
services remain, mangrove forest ecosystem services have been tentatively estimated at an average of US$ 4185 per hectare per year, though substantial spatial
and temporal variation in this figure exists. In Indian subcontinent, the quantitative
picture of ecosystem services of mangroves is still in an embryo stage, although,
with some 34 true mangrove species and a broad range of mangrove associate
floral species, the Indian Sundarbans mangrove system has an impressive presence
in the world mangrove atlas. The present book will not only highlight the ecosystem services of mangroves in a systematic manner but will also present some
important case studies of the recent times on mangrove ecosystem services, which
are still untapped and may serve as road maps for alternative livelihood for coastal
population and island dwellers.
The present book has critically analysed the data bank for each type of mangrove
ecosystem services not merely in the form of text description but also through case