Assessment of coastal and mangrove vulnerability in the Andaman Island, Indian Ocean

Abstract

Coastal regions are highly susceptible to the effects of global warming, including rising atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, increased cyclone frequency, and sea level rise. Thus, it is imperative to examine coastal vulnerability to minimize the impact of multiple hazards and protect coastal resources, such as mangroves. Particularly in India studying the vulnerability of coastal zones of Andaman and Nicobar Islands which fall in seismic zone V is critical for conservation efforts. We conducted a vulnerability analysis of coastal zones impacted by the 2004 earthquake, causing varying degrees of ground upliftment and subsidence. We compared coastal vulnerability among sites that experienced uplift, no change, and subsidence (the southern portion). Our analysis utilized the Coastal and Mangrove Vulnerability Index (CVI and MVI) to measure and compare vulnerability in six zones distributed along uplift and subsidence gradient. High-resolution satellite imagery including WorldView-2, 3, and GeoEye-1 from year 2022 are utilized on this study. The CVI and MVI offers a good way to measure and compare vulnerabilities across sites and offer insights for better management. The CVI and MVI results indicate that approximately 34% of coastal grids and over 23% of mangrove grids across all zones are highly to extremely highly vulnerable. Subsided zones were found to be more vulnerable than uplifted zones. These findings suggest that large-scale natural disturbances such as tectonic displacement have the potential to impact coastal vegetation and mangrove cover can become even more vulnerable. In conclusion, our study emphasizes the importance of vulnerability analyses in coastal regions, especially in areas prone to seismic activity. Our findings have direct implications for conservation and restoration efforts and underscore the need for continued monitoring and mitigation efforts to safeguard coastal resources for long-term sustainability.

Keywords

Mangroves / Coastal vulnerability / Mangrove vulnerability / 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake / Andaman Island

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Biswajit Mondal: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Rupesh K. Bhomia: Conceptualization, Validation, Resources, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Ashis Kumar Saha: Conceptualization, Software, Validation, Resources, Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Richard A. Mackenzie: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Project administration.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the grant provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) to support the Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation and Mitigation Program (SWAMP). The study was part of SWAMP program as a joint collaboration between CIFOR and US Forest Service. Mike Cloutier provided the high-resolution images for this analysis from the Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota, which enabled this assessment. We are also thankful to Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran (Scientist-D) and Mr. Anoop Raj Singh (Research Scholar) from the Wildlife Institute of India for providing information on mangrove vegetation cover for the study area.

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