DESTRUCTION OF MANGROVE WETLANDS - CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

摘要

Mangroves form one of the most extraordinary ecological formations occurring in the coastal lowlands of the tropics. Neither land nor sea, they consist of trees with flying buttresses, and are adapted to brackish waters and unstable, often highly saline soils. This type of vegetation provides fish nurseries, rich fishing grounds and a vast number of both timber and non-timber products. Mangroves are, on a global scale, exposed to many single destructive events. But the cumulative effects of natural disasters, clear-cutting, overlogging, fish- and shrimp farming, industrial and domestic pollution, dredging and industrial and agricultural land reclamation as well as fragmentation threaten their continued existence.