Research Highlights: This paper provides an alternative approach to contextualize mangrove forest loss by integrating available environmental and socio-economic data sets and products. Background and Objectives: Mangrove forest ecosystems grow in brackish water especially in areas exposed to accumulation of organic matter and tides. This forest type is widely distributed in tropical and subtropical coastal areas. Recent studies have revealed that the mangrove forest ecosystem had significantly degraded due to Land Use and Cover Changes (LUCC) in the recent past. Therefore, contribution of mangrove deforestation drivers has to be assessed to ensure a comprehensive analysis for ecosystem conservation and restoration and facilitate decision making. Materials and Methods: Firstly, a correlation analysis was conducted between individual data products and mangrove deforestation. Each data product was associated with the Dominant Land Use of Deforested Mangrove Patches data for 2012. Next, calculations were performed for specific data combinations to estimate the contributions of anthropogenic factors to mangrove deforestation. Results: In general, our study revealed that 22.64% of the total deforested area was converted into agriculture, 5.85% was converted into aquaculture, 0.69% was converted into infrastructure, and 16.35% was not converted into any specific land use class but was still affected by other human activities. Conclusions: We discovered that the percentage of land affected by these anthropogenic factors varied between countries and regions. This research can facilitate trade-off analysis for natural resources and environmental sustainability policy studies. Diverse management strategies can be evaluated to assess the trade-offs between preserving mangrove forests for climate change mitigation and transforming them for economic purposes.

This study proposes a new model for land suitability for educational facilities based on spatial product development to determine the optimal locations for achieving education targets in West Java, Indonesia. Single-aspect approaches, such as accessibility and spatial hazard analyses, have not been widely applied in suitability assessments on the location of educational facilities. Model development was performed based on analyses of the economic value of the land and on the integration of various parameters across three main aspects: accessibility, comfort, and a multi-natural/biohazard (disaster) risk index. Based on the maps of disaster hazards, higher flood-prone areas are found to be in gentle slopes and located in large cities. Higher risks of landslides are spread throughout the study area, while higher levels of earthquake risk are predominantly in the south, close to the active faults and megathrusts present. Presently, many schools are located in very high vulnerability zones (2057 elementary, 572 junior high, 157 senior high, and 313 vocational high schools). The comfort-level map revealed 13,459 schools located in areas with very low and low comfort levels, whereas only 2377 schools are in locations of high or very high comfort levels. Based on the school accessibility map, higher levels are located in the larger cities of West Java, whereas schools with lower accessibility are documented far from these urban areas. In particular, senior high school accessibility is predominant in areas of lower accessibility levels, as there are comparatively fewer facilities available in West Java. Overall, higher levels of suitability are spread throughout West Java. These distribution results revealed an expansion of the availability of schools by area: senior high schools, 303,973.1 ha; vocational high schools, 94,170.51 ha; and junior high schools, 12,981.78 ha. Changes in elementary schools (3936.69 ha) were insignificant, as the current number of elementary schools is relatively much higher. This study represents the first to attempt to integrate these four parameters—accessibility, multi natural hazard, biohazard, comfort index, and land value—to determine potential areas for new schools to achieve educational equity targets.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest coffee producer. Coffee plantations cover 1.2 million ha of the country with a production of 500 kg/ha. However, information regarding the distribution of coffee plantations in Indonesia is limited. This study aimed to assess the accuracy of classification model and determine its important variables for mapping coffee plantations. The model obtained 29 variables which derived from the integration of multi-resolution, multi-temporal, and multi-sensor remote sensing data, namely, pan-sharpened GeoEye-1, multi-temporal Sentinel 2, and DEMNAS. Applying a random forest algorithm (tree = 1000, mtry = all variables, minimum node size: 6), this model achieved overall accuracy, kappa statistics, producer accuracy, and user accuracy of 79.333%, 0.774, 92.000%, and 90.790%, respectively. In addition, 12 most important variables achieved overall accuracy, kappa statistics, producer accuracy, and user accuracy 79.333%, 0.774, 91.333%, and 84.570%, respectively. Our results indicate that random forest algorithm is efficient in mapping coffee plantations in an agroforestry system.

This study investigated the drivers of degradation in Southeast Asian mangroves through multi-source remote sensing data products. The degradation drivers that affect approximately half of this area are unidentified; therefore, naturogenic and anthropogenic impacts on these mangroves were studied. Various global land cover (GLC) products were harmonized and examined to identify major anthropogenic changes affecting mangrove habitats. To investigate the naturogenic factors, the impact of the water balance was evaluated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and evapotranspiration and precipitation data. Vegetation indices’ response in deforested mangrove regions depends significantly on the type of drivers. A trend analysis and break point detection of percentage of tree cover (PTC), percentage of non-tree vegetation (PNTV), and percentage of non-vegetation (PNV) datasets can aid in measuring, estimating, and tracing the drivers of change. The assimilation of GLC products suggests that agriculture and fisheries are the predominant drivers of mangrove degradation. The relationship between water balance and degradation shows that naturogenic drivers have a wider impact than anthropogenic drivers, and degradation in particular regions is likely to be a result of the accumulation of various drivers. In large-scale studies, remote sensing data products could be integrated as a remarkably powerful instrument in assisting evidence-based policy making.

A landslide susceptibility mapping is essential for landslide hazard mitigation to reduce the associated risk. This paper aims to present the results of the landslide susceptibility modeling in the Citarik sub-watershed using three bivariate statistical-based methods, i.e., frequency ratio (FR), information value (IV), and weight of evidence (WoE). The main objective of this study is to evaluate the significance of the threshold of the area under curve (AUC) value in parameter selection. In this study, 118 landslide pixels were compiled from Google Earth images, unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) aerial photos taken just after the landslide, official landslide reports, and field observation. Thirteen landslide causative factors were prepared in Geographic Information System (GIS) environment, derived from various satellite images and maps. The landslide data were divided into two groups, 70% of data as training data and the rest as test data. Two scenarios that involve a different number of parameters were compared to explain the threshold of the AUC value in parameter selection and model accuracy. The result of this study shows that the AUC value threshold of 0.6 for parameter selection cannot be applied in all cases, and the performance of both two scenarios was excellent in assessing landslide susceptibility in this study area. Those three landslide susceptibility zonation maps of the best scenario showed that the sub-watershed's northern, northeastern, south-eastern, and southern parts were under high to very high susceptibility to landslides, including the Cimanggung area where a recent deadly double landslide occurred.