4 Mangrove Forest Ecological Functions: Protecter Of Coastal Areas To Rescue Climate Change

Mangrove Forest Illustration/ANTARA PHOTO/Rivan Awal Lingga/hp.

YOGYAKARTA Mangrove forests, aka mangroves, which are often found in coastal areas to swamps, actually have many benefits for the environment. In coastal ecosystems, mangroves act as producers that are liked by small fish, shells, and crabs. In addition, what are the ecological functions of mangrove forests?

Compiled by VOI from various sources, Thursday 29 December 2022, here are some of the ecological functions of mangrove forests:

1. Covering the Beach from Abrasi

Adapted from the website of the Directorate General of Control and Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (Ditjen PPI KLHK), mangroves are plants that have solid roots, so they can reduce waves, storms, and tsunamis.

Strong roots also make Mangroves function as a protector of abrasion, silt resistance, and sediment catchers. This makes the Mangrove forest a major ecosystem to support important life in coastal and marine areas.

2. Maintain the Sustainability of Food Sources

As mentioned above, mangroves can act as producers that are liked by small fish, shells, and crabs. Many animals depend on living by eating parts of mangrove plants for survival.

The existence of healthy mangroves is a blessing for coastal communities because they can harvest fish, shells and crabs. When the bad weather makes them unable to go to sea, the mangrove forest is a suggestion to realize food security.

In addition to providing protein sources, mangroves can also meet the needs of vitamins and minerals through various processed mangrove products that can be used as forces, dodols, chips, coffee, and skin care products.

"Protection and restoration of mangroves not only increases the availability of fishery resources, but also improves the quality of coastal waters, as well as increases the availability of alternative livelihood sources, such as ecotourism that can improve people's welfare," said Director General of Forest Management. Lestari Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) Agus Justianto, quoting Antara.

3. Save Climate Change

Launching VOI, mangrove forests have a fairly high potential for carbon blue carbon, including biomass on the surface and mangrove sediment and biomass below the surface.

Blue carbon has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which have clearly been stated in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) document.

Just so you know, blue carbon is a carbon that is absorbed and stored by the sea and coastal ecosystems. Biomass in the form of leaves, stems, and roots, as well as mangrove sediments and seagrasses can store carbon four to five times larger than mainland forests.

4. Become a Tourist Destination

The existence of mangrove forests can also be a useful tourist destination as a place for natural tourism activities (recreation, education and research). The wealth of mangrove natural resources in the form of unique vegetation formations, animals and associations in the mangrove ecosystem have potential that can be sold as a tourist attraction, especially ecotourism that offers education and conservation concepts.

Ekotourism is one of the options in promoting a distinctive environment and maintaining its authenticity as well as being an area for tourist visits.

This is information about the ecological function of mangrove forests. Based on data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK), the mangrove land area in Indonesia will reach 3.36 million hectares (ha) in 2021. Of this amount, the largest mangrove land is found in Maluku and Papua, which is 1.79 million ha.