Modelling Tsunami Effects on Mangrove Ecosystems and the Role They Play in Saving Lives and Properties

红树林在稳定海岸线和提供重要的生态和社会产品和服务方面发挥着重要作用，包括野生动物栖息地、柴火和木材，但红树林正在以惊人的速度减少。一些观察人士认为，红树林起到了生物屏障的作用，保护人们和财产免受海啸和飓风等自然灾害的侵袭。红树林的丧失和退化可能使沿海地区更容易受到海啸和飓风的影响，从而导致数十万人的生命损失和数十亿美元的损失。2004年12月，当极具破坏性的印度洋海啸袭击印度南部泰米尔纳德邦时，一些红树林茂密的地区比没有红树林的地区遭受的人员伤亡和破坏更少。人们还认为，密西西比河三角洲沿岸植被的丧失是2005年卡特里娜飓风造成巨大破坏的原因之一。尽管许多科学家强调了红树林在拯救生命和财产方面的重要性和作用，但支持这一说法的数据很少，而且红树林的保护功能从未得到科学和系统的调查。这项研究项目的长期目标是探索红树林是否在海啸和飓风等自然灾害中拯救生命和财产方面发挥作用。为了实现这一目标，调查人员将在南亚和东南亚海啸灾区进行实地调查，并收集遥感数据和其他辅助数据。这些数据将被用来利用分类前变化检测技术来制定一系列指数，这些技术代表了城市地区因自然灾害造成的财产损失，利用面向对象的方法(与监督决策树分类方法相比)识别红树林生态系统及其周围的土地利用和土地覆盖类型，并使用多端元光谱混合分析来表征红树林的密度。作为一种更经济、更省力、更省时的替代方案，本研究利用遥感和地理信息系统技术开发的损害指数为许多资源管理和应用提供了有效和广泛使用的可能性。拟议计划中开发的评估技术、指数或组合将对灾害管理和规划产生重大影响，因为所有减灾、规划和备灾方案都需要从通过估计可能受到灾害事件影响的人员和建筑物的数量来了解风险和潜在影响开始。本项目采用的比较和分类方法对任何级别的应用都是有用的。这一拟议研究计划的结果和发现以及在该项目期间收集的生物物理和社会经济数据将成为实现确定红树林是否在拯救生命和财产方面发挥重要作用这一长期目标的坚实基础。这一研究方向有望为减少沿海城市在自然灾害和自然资源管理方面的脆弱性作出有益的社会贡献。它还承诺在地理信息科学方面进行方法论创新。

Mangrove forests play an important role in stabilizing shorelines and in providing important ecological and societal goods and services including wildlife habitat, firewood, and timber, but mangrove forests are declining at an alarming rate. Some observers have posited that mangroves act as bio-shield to protect people and property from natural disasters, such as tsunamis and hurricanes. The loss and degradation of mangroves may make coastal regions more vulnerable to tsunamis and hurricanes, thereby leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. When the highly destructive Indian Ocean tsunami hit India's southern state of Tamil Nadu in December 2004, some areas with dense mangroves suffered fewer human casualties and less damage than areas without mangroves. It is also believed that loss of coastal vegetation along the Mississippi delta contributed to the enormous devastation from hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although many scientists have emphasized the importance and role of mangrove forests in saving lives and property, only sparse data exist to support this claim, and the protective function of mangroves has never been scientifically and systematically investigated. The long-term goal of this research project is to explore if mangrove forests play a role in saving lives and property from natural disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes. To achieve this goal, the investigators will conduct field surveys in tsunami-hit areas in South and Southeast Asia and collect remotely sensed data and other ancillary data. These data will be used to develop a number of indices using pre-classification change-detection techniques that represent property damages in urban areas due to a natural disaster, identify the mangrove ecosystem and its surrounding land-use and land-cover types using object-oriented approaches (in contrast with supervised decision-tree classification methods), and employ multiple-endmember spectral-mixture analysis to characterize the density of mangroves.As a more cost and labor-effective and time-efficient alternative, the damage indices developed in this study using remote sensing and geographic information system technologies offer the potential for effectively and extensively use for many resource management and applications. The assessment techniques, indices or composites developed in the proposed plan will have a significant impact on disaster management and planning, because all hazard mitigation, planning, and preparedness programs need to begin with an understanding of risk and potential impacts through an estimation of the number of people and structures that would be affected by a disaster event. The comparison and classification approaches employed in this project will be useful for any level of application. Results and findings from this proposed research plan and the biophysical and socioeconomic data collected during this project will serve as a solid foundation to achieve the long-term goal of determining whether mangrove forests play an important role in saving lives and property. This line of research promises socially beneficial contributions related to reducing the vulnerability of coastal cities in relation to natural disasters and to natural resource management. It also promises to make methodological innovations in geographic information science.