NASA Finds Cause of Florida Mangrove Forests Die-off

Narration: Temilola Fatoyinbo

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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