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A mangrove forest is a forest
made out of trees that grow in

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areas where land meets sea.

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So these are essentially wetland
forests that are only present in

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tropical or subtropical regions
worldwide. My name is Dr. Lola

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Fatoyinbo, and I'm a Research
Scientist in the Biospheric

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Sciences Lab.

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Mangroves are important for a
whole number of reasons. They

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provide what we call ecosystem
services to humans. And some of

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those services that they provide
are storm surge protections, the

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protection from waves and
erosion of the coast. They're

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also really important for water
filtration and for protection of

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the coastline.

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So in 2017, when Hurricane Irma
hit southern Florida, we were

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really interested in getting a
better idea of how resilient

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mangrove forests would be to
increasing storm impacts that we

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were expecting with changes in
climate. We worked with an

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airborne instrument suite called
G-LiHT. This is the Goddard

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LIDAR hyperspectral Thermal
instrument, which is a small pod

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that has multiple instruments
set up together that you can

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essentially attached to an
airplane. What we found was that

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actually, the main cause of
permanent die off in mangrove

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forests is when you have these
really high storm surge that

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come in to areas and result in
ponding of water in these basin

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mangrove areas. So essentially,
areas where salt water becomes

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stagnant. And when that water
becomes stagnant, it gets a

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really high concentration of
nutrients and the salt, leading

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to a permanent die off of these
mangrove areas, which is in some

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ways becoming a vicious cycle.
Because in those areas, because

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they're basins, you're not able
to grow new mangroves that are

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then accumulating more soil. And
so you end up with mangroves

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dying, the peat collapsing and
that peak collapse, not allowing

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for new mangroves to come in and
resulting in permanent dieoff. 

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o I think the greatest takeaw
y from this study is that ev

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n though mangroves are oft
n thought of as being real

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y resilient and resistant to har
h conditions, they are sti

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l really vulnerable. And we ne
d to make sure that we're able 

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o maintain the natural conditio
s and hydrology that they grow a

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d for them to continue to prote
t us from these extre

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e condition