Coastal mangrove ecosystems remain among Earth’s most valuable forests, serving as key carbon sinks and protecting billions of dollars of coastal infrastructure from sea level rise. Mangroves are also highly vulnerable to both direct human influence and growing climatic threats, with hotspots of loss scattered across the tropics. This seminar will present the groundbreaking methodology and results from a global-scale satellite-based analysis to map the drivers and extent of mangrove losses over the last several decades. Using a machine learning analysis of over one million Landsat images, we capture mangrove losses due to agriculture, urbanization, sea level rise, and extreme weather events at high resolution. This analysis is currently being integrally used to monitor global restoration and conservation initiatives, inform key mangrove preservation policies, and evaluate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

This seminar will also provide participants with an overview of a large-scale capacity building initiative to train thousands of students across South Asia and West Africa with cutting-edge remote sensing tools for environmental monitoring. Participants will have the opportunity to directly get involved in training and collaboration opportunities with NASA, National Geographic, Google, and Stanford University in the field of satellite-based climate analysis.