Assessment of mangrove forest damage and its recovery in Banda Aceh city post-tsunami disaster

Abstract

The Indian Ocean Tsunami on 26th December 2004, had caused devastation on land and coastal ecosystems. One of the worst affected ecosystems is the mangrove forest. Many areas of mangrove forest have been destroyed, and it may pose a long-term impact for the region, both in terms of forest and biodiversity conservation and in terms of the ability of the ecosystem to support the livelihoods of the coastal communities. The tragedy of tsunami has requested the rationale for conserving and sustainably managing natural ecosystems among the researchers and scientific community. The research was carried out to make a post-tsunami damage assessment and recovery of mangrove forest in Banda Aceh city area. Several high-resolution satellite imageries data have been effectively used to detect, assess and monitor the changes of mangrove forests in the pre and post-tsunami period using multi-temporal optical satellite data. An on-screen visual interpretation was made to identify the heterogeneous patches for the preliminary classification of fieldwork. A supervised classification was performed to obtain the pre and post Tsunami assessment maps. Accuracy assessment of the classified maps was performed on pixel-level using ground truth. The result highlighted the changes in the spatial extent of the mangrove forests in the study area as a result of Tsunami disaster. The latest condition of the mangrove forest recovery is about 90.3% of the total damage area.

Mangrove recovery in the Nicobar archipelago after the 2004 tsunami and coastal subsidence

“…While at site 2, the vegetation cover after sustaining a 66% decline had recovered comparatively well and consisted of 75% of vegetation cover in 2019 compared to the 2004 estimate. A recent study from Sumatra Island following the 2004 tsunami also reported a similar trend where a site left with 21% of remnant vegetation had recovered quickly to reach 90% of vegetation cover by 2018 (Affan et al 2019). Therefore, the increase in the vegetation cover at site 2 can be attributed to the remnant vegetation as they provide plenty of seed material to revegetate the available open spaces.…”

“…However, to understand how these patterns would change during the course of succession would require long-term data. Several studies in the past have documented the aftermath of tsunami on the mangrove community in Asia (Bahuguna et al 2008;Porwal et al 2012;Kamthonkiat et al 2011;Affan et al 2019). These studies have presented a significant use of geospatial tools to realize qualitative and quantitative dynamics in mangrove vegetation.…”

“…Remnant vegetation often acts as nuclei of succession by providing large quantities of propagules and ameliorating the microclimatic conditions (e.g., shade, soil nutrients, and physical protection) that are critical for the growth and establishment of seedlings (Guevara et al 1992). However, in the tsunami-affected sites in Asia, very few studies have highlighted the influence of remnant vegetation on mangrove recovery (Affan et al 2019;Prabakaran 2020). Therefore, we studied the mangrove recovery in the Nicobar archipelago to understand how the presence and absence of remnant vegetation along with site characteristics spatiotemporally influence the rate of mangrove succession in terms of species richness, stem density, and mangrove cover increase.…”

Konsep Hutan Bakau sebagai Konsep untuk Mitigasi Tsunami di Banda Aceh, Indonesia

“…Area hutan bakau yang ada di Kota Banda Aceh sebelum tsunami Samudra Hindia tahun 2004 adalah seluas 84,32 Ha. Setelah bencana tsunami tersebut, luasan area hutan bakau menurun drastis menjadi 18,08 Ha, dan pada tahun 2018 meningkat kembali menjadi 76,15 Ha (Affan et al, 2019). Sebuah penelitian yang secara khusus mempelajari tentang Rhizophora sp.…”

Relationship of mangrove snail’s abundance (Cerithidea sp.) with mangrove density at mangrove ecosystem in Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar

“…Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar regency located at the northern coastal area of Aceh province. This area has a potential coastal vegetation such as mangrove ecology, [15] stated that the coastal of Banda Aceh is an area that has a mangrove ecosystem of 76,15 Ha in width. Some related study about biotic mangrove ecosystem especially gastropod done by [16] about community structure of gastropods and bivalves associates in mangrove area at Pusung Cium Island, Aceh Tamiang, [17] about distribution pattern of gastropods in mangrove ecosystem at Reuleung River, Aceh Besar.…”