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货物和服务方面发挥着重要作用，包括野生动物栖息地、木柴和木材，但红树林正在以惊人的速度减少。 一些观察家认为，红树林是保护人民和财产免受海啸和飓风等自然灾害的生物屏障。 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，从而导致数十万人丧生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的泰米尔纳德邦时，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要少。 人们还认为，密西西比三角洲沿岸沿着植被的丧失是2005年卡特里娜飓风造成巨大破坏的原因之一。虽然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，但只有很少的数据支持这一说法，红树林的保护功能从未得到科学和系统的调查。 这个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。 这些数据将用于利用分类前变化探测技术制定一些指数，这些指数反映自然灾害造成的城市地区财产损失，利用面向对象的方法确定红树林生态系统及其周围的土地使用和土地覆盖类型（与监督决策树分类方法相比），并采用多端元光谱混合分析来表征红树林的密度。作为一种更具成本效益、人力效益和时间效益的替代方法，这项研究利用遥感和地理信息系统技术制定的损害指数有可能有效和广泛地用于许多资源管理和应用。拟议计划中开发的评估技术、指数或综合材料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通过估计受灾害事件影响的人员和建筑物的数量，从了解风险和潜在影响开始开始。 本项目中采用的比较和分类方法将适用于任何级别的应用程序。 这一拟议研究计划的结果和调查结果以及该项目期间收集的生物物理和社会经济数据将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的长期目标奠定坚实的基础。 这方面的研究有望在减少沿海城市在自然灾害和自然资源管理方面的脆弱性方面作出有益于社会的贡献。 它还有望在地理信息科学中进行方法论创新。

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.