Mangrove forest health condition from space and the use of in situ data.

Remote sensing (RS) is a widely used technology for monitoring mangrove forests, but there are some inconsistencies in their capacity to assess mangrove ecosystem health status. Our review aims to investigate how RS and in situ data are being applied together in assessments of mangrove forest health conditions. Our results showed that commonly the concept of mangrove ecosystem health was not defined and indicators that were not clearly related to it were applied. Furthermore, low to medium spatial resolution satellites were more used to detect changes in the mangrove forests' environmental condition than the high spatial resolution ones, and the use of RS with data collected in situ was present in only 39% of the articles. We concluded that studies consider vegetation indexes the same as vigor, so the mangrove ecosystem health; and vigor as the only indicator needed, not using in situ data to validate the mangrove health status.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: JULIANA NASCIMENTO NERES reports financial support was provided by FUNDO BRASILEIRO PARA A BIODIVERSIDADE - FUNBIO, and HUMANIZE INSTITUTE. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)