Rooted, yet vulnerable

When you travel via local trains in Mumbai, you sign-up for a lot of experiences. During the peak hours, even getting on the train is neck and neck. But when you manage to get on, and take your eyes away from your phone, you can catch a glimpse of the cityscape through the crammed compartments — a window into Maximum City.?

One of my usual train routes is the one going south, towards Churchgate. After the train leaves the Bandra station, in a few minutes one can hear the Mithi river rumbling beneath the railway bridge. The river flushes the city’s waste into the Arabian Sea. Then a peculiar foul odour, which most Mumbaikars are familiar with, fills the compartments. This smell is somewhat like a signal; a reminder to look out through the window.

And for just a few seconds, one can see a sliver of green fade out of view. For the longest time, this was my only interaction with mangroves.

And now, mangroves have become a constant part of my life, after I started working with Mongabay-India. From understanding the reasons behind their degradation to reading fascinating mangrove conservation success stories, I am grasping the extent of their formidable force, everyday, and what could happen to our coasts in their absence.?

Mongabay's reportage on mangroves has played a crucial role for me in this journey. Mangroves have many benefits – they prevent erosion, minimise impact from storm surges and cyclones, aid ecosystem regeneration and carbon sequestration, and provide nutrition for the marine ecosystem. But once lost, restoring them is hard work.

Here are some of the most exciting and informative reads from Mongabay's vault.?

Mangroves as bioshields

"The basic premise of journalism is to question everything. The trait bleeds into daily life and the suspicious nature gets ingrained. Sometimes, however, one is compelled to throw doubts to the wind and embrace the course of nature. And as one submits, humanity becomes our ally too, in small but profound ways.A recent field trip to report on mangrove plantations in Gujarat was a lesson in trusting nature and humanity." - Ravleen Kaur, Contributing Writer

Kaur's story is about a community-based initiative in Bharuch district, Gujarat, where the village residents are developing a coastal bioshield, by planting mangrove and non-mangrove species together. This bioshield not only helps with?carbon sequestration, but also improves?aquaculture, agriculture,?and fodder availability.

"To reach the plantation site, we had to walk for two kilometres through dense mangroves. Except it was not a walk. Every step was knee-deep, with a crab popping out when the foot went inside."

When love for mangroves turn into an ecotourism opportunity

When Shweta Hule, her husband, Satish Hule, and eight others launched the Swamini Self Help Group, they put The Mandavi Creek in Vengurla on the world's map. Located in Maharashtra's southernmost district, Sindhudurg, the creek is home to dense mangroves. Although Sindhudurg covers only 3.8 percent of the total mangrove vegetation in the state, it is the richest in terms of its biodiversity.

“The tourists are often amazed when we take them through the mangroves, helping them identify the different species of flora and fauna in the creek.”??- Shweta Hule, Founder, Swamini Self Help Group

The group organises mangrove safaris, and they aim?to create awareness about mangroves and also introduce tourists to species such as smooth-coated otters, mudskippers, mangrove crabs, storks, herons, cormorants and egrets.

Travelling back in time to gauge mangrove damage in the Sundarbans

Mangrove ecosystems are at risk due to climate change, coupled with the legacy of historical shoreline changes from human activities. To help make sense of mangrove damage from extreme weather events and create records of the impacts of cyclones on these ecosystems, scientists are using remote sensing to observe changes in mangrove systems.

Using cyclone Amphan, which hit India and Bangladesh coasts around the Sundarbans in May 2020 as their case study, a team of scientists at the University of Delaware in the United States and the University of Goettingen, Germany, developed a rapid, remote sensing-based approach to gauge flooding of coastal lands and mangrove damage after the cyclone in near real-time.

“Remote sensing can enable you to do time travelling. So, you can go back in time, 20 to 30 years and do it for every season and see if the changes in mangroves or vegetation are part of the natural variability or due to human activities.”?-?Pinki Mondal, Environmental Geographer,?University of Delaware

Learn more about India's mangrove ecosystem, ongoing research to improve conservation efforts, and conservation success stories here!?

In the next edition of Mongabay-India Specials we visit India's crown, the Himalayas to take a closer look at its fragile ecosystem through the eyes of glaciologists and wildlife researchers.?

Thank you,

Saumitra Shinde, Social-Media Coordinator, Mongabay-India

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