open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/98050

Assessing land use and land cover changes from 1989 to 2021 in relation to economic zone construction along mangrove forests on the east coast of Bangladesh

英語

Transition matrix

2025-08-12

Springer

Journal of coastal conservation

29(4)

40

Coastal ecosystems, represented by mangrove forests, have been degraded by human activities, making ecosystem restoration essential to reinstate ecosystem services. Since 2016, a governmental program has led to the exploitation of mangroves along the eastern coast of Bangladesh. To assess the impacts, land use and land cover (LULC) changes were monitored before and after the exploitation, from 1989 to 2021, covering 192 km(2) of mangrove plantation and surrounding areas. LULC mapping was conducted using Landsat and Sentinel images with supervised classification via a random forest classifier in Google Earth Engine. The area was categorized into nine LULC classes: built-up land, agricultural land, homestead vegetation, artificial water, grassland, forest, bare land, mudflat and seawater. The kappa coefficients of the maps were high (> 0.71), indicating accurate classification. Built-up land was absent until 2014 and increased to 13.0 km(2) by 2021. Forest expanded from 32.6 km(2) in 1989 to 43.1 km(2) in 2014 but decreased to 36.0 km(2) by 2021. Transition matrix revealed that this decline was mainly due to the conversion of forest to built-up land (3.3 km(2)), mudflat (2.3 km(2)), bare land (2.2 km(2)) and artificial water (2.1 km(2)). Economic zone construction contributed to increases in built-up land, bare land and artificial water leading to forest loss and impacting the remaining forests. Moreover, substantial conversion of grassland into built-up and bare land poses further threats to the ecological resilience of mangroves. Therefore, comprehensive monitoring, including the built-up surrounding areas, is crucial for timely and effective conservation efforts of mangrove forests.

学術雑誌論文

Accepted Manuscript

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-025-01125-x

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