Mangrove forest extent and status along the Eritrean Red Sea coast

Abstract

A mangrove forest species and spatial extent study has been conducted in Eritrea to see if there has been mangrove forest area change over the last two decades, and to describe mangrove cover status. GIS, field work data and remote sensing were used in the study. Supervised classification (Maximum Likelihood Classification technique) was used for remote sensing Landsat image classification. Pre- calculated NDVI value has been shown to represent and extract the amount of mangrove greenness cover along the study areas of Massawa and Assab. NDVI values are also used to see relationship with mangrove stem density per quadrant. There are three mangrove species identified in the study areas: Avicennia marina, Rhizophora mucronata and Ceriops tagal. They are generally limited to sheltered environments like bays, channels and semi closed inland side. Avicennia marina is the most dominant species. The results indicate that mangrove forest spatial extent covered an area of approximately 8900 ha in 1994, which had already declined by 7.7% in 2014. Anthropogenic impact and natural mortality could reasons for the mangrove forest loss.