Mangrove health condition from space: a systematic review
Mangrove; Remote sensing; Anthropogenic and natural pressures;
environmental condition
Human impacts and natural disturbances can affect mangrove ecosystem services, such
as fisheries resources, coastal protection, and climate change mitigation, and cause loss
of functionality. Mangroves are Blue Carbon systems, and carbon uptake is possible due
to photosynthesis, i.e., based on chlorophyll. Remote sensing associated with in situ
data can use to investigate the mechanisms affecting mangrove primary production. We
conducted a systematic review to understand how satellite images have been used
together with in situ data to characterize mangrove health conditions. We used the
PRISMA protocol to collect evidence from articles, relying on a search string
(mangrove* AND (remote*sens* OR satellite OR image* OR monitor*) AND (stress*
OR condition* OR health* OR status*)) at databases Web of Science and Scopus,
between 1945 and 2021. Of the 1,383 articles analyzed, 81 were eligible according to
the established inclusion and exclusion criteria. We observed that the Landsat satellite,
with a moderate spatial resolution, is frequently used to detect changes in the
environmental condition of mangroves. Furthermore, the articles based the
interpretation of the images on vegetation indices using similar health parameters. Many
of the articles analyzed did not carry out collections in the field to corroborate their
results, using satellite images and literature to validate their inferences, possibly related
to the low availability of financial resources and poor accessibility to coastal
environments.