In northern Sri Lanke one big lagoon called Vadamarachchi lagoon is having various species of mangroves . In the mean time moves are under way to make the lagoon fresh water.

The article below will give you some more information

Article Reclamation of Land and Improve Water Productivity of Jaffna...

Dear Giulio,

I believe that José Paula (see link bellow) had a project called Transmap (see also link below) which could be useful for answering your questions.

All the best,

Gil

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose_Paula/

http://www.transmap.fc.ul.pt

Mangrove are certainly very important and deserve complex research. We do not have so much experience witht them, but have a lit about over 50 other tree species in more tan 60 sites in Europe, US and Australia. We have been always starting with measurements of their structures, i.e, geometrical (partially, whenever possible) and effective (function dependent, always). This means leaf area (and illuminated leaf area) distribution, effective crown form and area, similarly root distribution (separately absorptive, air supplied and skeleton roots). Evaluate effectivity of conducting systems using anatomical data (vessel distribution in stems - at DBH - and petioles) and calculate conductivity or max flow rate, which you can compare with max measured sap flow rate. (We found in two very distant species /Quercus robur and Laurus azorica/, that theoretical flow in stems was about 40 times higher than max measured seasonal flow, but theor. flow in petiols was only about 5 % higher). Most of these parameters you can measure at the tree level, but upscale on the basis of forest inventory and/or remote sensing methods. Evaluate the eventual impact of hypoxia (when drought is probably not so frequent limiting factor). Unfortutanely this system cannot open our literature, but you can use email ([email protected]) in interested. Jan

Dear Gil,

thank you for you answer. I read about Transmap: it is very interesting and indeed the final results of my work should be something similar. We share the focus on Coastal habitats and reading in particular the Transmap Dissemination Booklet it seems that concerning mangroves (but not only) the main aspect was the monitoring of their presence starting from a defined baseline and following the same comparable methodologies.

So in this case it seems that the key elements for mangrove monitoring was a baseline assessment of their extension and then following their status by measuring changes within time.

Dear Jan Cermák,

as you said your studies started from local measurements of the (trees in your case) structure. It is not clear that in next steps you managed to relate remote sensing measurements to these and the other interesting parameters you cited. Probably a comparison of such "in situ" parameters and remote sensing one would give interesting results.

The intention of my work is focused in exploring what can be seen today with remote sensing (in particular from satellite) to characterise the "status" of mangroves in a certain areas. However I'll take you answer as inspiration to focus my literature and state-of-the-art search on moving from local structure measurements to RS.

I have done research at South Malang (Indonesia). I think RS is one of the best tool to see area change of mangrove. However, we have to do in situ monitoring as well. We need information about mangrove density, substrate, and other physical and chemical factors, and off course social action (e.g. replanting program, local policy, etc). We found that there is increasing mangrove area about 40% after 7 years monitoring. It might be caused by replanting program at this area. NDVI and mangrove density show the significant correlation. Scoring and clustering method may help to classify the reason of area change.

The link may helpful to you.