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Assessing Vulnerability to Cyclone Hazards in the World’s Largest Mangrove Forest, The Sundarbans: A Geospatial Analysis
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Sohag Ahammed,
Md. Shamim Reza Saimun ,
Md Saifuzzaman Bhuiyan,
Sanjeev K. Srivastava ,
Sharif A. Mukul ,
Mohammed A. S. Arfin-Khan
Forests, Volume: 15, Issue: 10
Swansea University Author: FAHMIDA SULTANA
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© 2024 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
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DOI (Published version): 10.3390/f15101722
Abstract
The Sundarbans is the world’s largest contiguous mangrove forest with an area of about 10,000 square kilometers and shared between Bangladesh and India. This world-renowned mangrove forest, located on the lower Ganges floodplain and facing the Bay of Bengal, has long served as a crucial barrier, shi...
| Published in: | Forests |
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| ISSN: | 1999-4907 |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2024
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67938 |
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| Abstract: |
The Sundarbans is the world’s largest contiguous mangrove forest with an area of about 10,000 square kilometers and shared between Bangladesh and India. This world-renowned mangrove forest, located on the lower Ganges floodplain and facing the Bay of Bengal, has long served as a crucial barrier, shielding southern coastal Bangladesh from cyclone hazards. However, the Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem is now increasingly threatened by climate-induced hazards, particularly tropical cyclones originating from the Indian Ocean. To assess the cyclone vulnerability of this unique ecosystem, using geospatial techniques, we analyzed the damage caused by past cyclones and the subsequent recovery across three salinity zones, i.e., Oligohaline, Mesohaline, and Polyhaline. Our study also examined the relationship between cyclone intensity with the extent of damage and forest recovery. The findings of our study indicate that the Polyhaline zone, the largest in terms of area and with the lowest elevation, suffered the most significant damage from cyclones in the Sundarbans region, likely due to its proximity to the most cyclone paths. A correlation analysis revealed that cyclone damage positively correlated with wind speed and negatively correlated with the distance of landfall from the center of the Sundarbans. With the expectation of more extreme weather events in the near future, the Sundarbans mangrove forest faces a potentially devastating outlook unless both natural protection processes and human interventions are undertaken to safeguard this critical ecosystem. |
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| Keywords: |
Bay of Bengal; climate change; extreme weather events; natural hazards; NDVI; salinity zones; sea-level rise; tropical cyclone |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |
| Funders: |
We acknowledge the funding from the SUST Research Center (FES/2022/1/09, FES/2023/2/01) and the National Science and Technology Fellowship (NST, Session: 2021–22, Merit Serial: 92, Registration no: 55). This study also received partial support from the Asia-Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research (Japan) under the project “Protecting ecosystems and livelihoods of the Sundarbans, a World Heritage site: Assessing the impact of natural hazards on forest-based ecosystem services” (project code: CRRP2020-08MY-Srivastava), and the National Geographic Society (USA) under the project “Unlocking the potentials of Sundarbans mangrove forest as a nature-based climate solution” (grant reference number: NGS-78528R-22). |
| Issue: |
10 |