AN APPROACH TO MAPPING THE INLAND EXPANSION OF MANGROVE FORESTS IN FLORIDA: UTILIZING LANDSAT TM FOR IMPROVED CLIMATE CHANGE ORIENTED MANGROVE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

摘要

Mangrove forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services that are beneficial to society, including habitat for diverse marine species, flood protection, shoreline stability from erosion, and carbon storage. Overall, mangrove forest ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to changes in temperature, rainfall, sea level, and salinity. However, certain mangrove ecosystem communities are able to survive fluctuations in climate and land use. In particular, mangrove forests in the Southeastern United States continue to expand. Thus, there is a need to better understand the impacts of climate change and human disturbance on mangrove migration. Current management practices involve in-situ characterization of national wetland conditions. In order to improve interagency mangrove management practices, we characterized the extent and migration of mangroves in Indian River Lagoon, Florida, and provided a remote sensing based 10-year time series analysis of land cover classification maps. Depicting mangrove evolution and extent into salt marsh ecosystems, the time series maps were created through optical Landsat TM satellite imagery. After performing image analysis and classification accuracy assessment procedures, the results of the mangrove classification satellite imagery based maps revealed valuable insights into the distribution, extent and temporal magnitude of mangrove expansion in the Indian River Lagoon and its impact on salt marsh ecosystems.