The evaluation of mangrove forests for disaster prevention and mitigation in coastal areas against storm surge damage caused by sea level rise.
Mangrove forests provide a variety of ecosystem services while being used by local residents. The carbon stocks of coastal ecosystems are larger than those of terrestrial ecosystems (2009, United Nations Environment Programme). Conservation of mangrove forests is one of the effective means of climate change mitigation. Mangrove forests are also thought to play a role in mitigating the damage caused by typhoons and storm surges due to sea level rise, which are expected to increase in size as a result of climate change, and thus can be one of the ways to adapt to climate change. However, mangrove forests are currently being lost or degraded due to large-scale development and commercial logging, and storm surge damage has already become apparent in some areas. In some areas, storm surge damage has already become apparent. For this reason, coastal conservation activities by reforesting mangrove forests are becoming more and more active, but there are many cases where reforestation has failed because the sea level rise due to climate change has prevented the seedling establishment. This is due to the lack of knowledge on what kind of tree species should be planted in what areas for recovery. Therefore, we will evaluate the functions of mangrove forests for the coastal disasters, which play an important role in mitigating and adapting to climate change, against storm surge damage caused by rising sea levels in coastal areas, and formulate conservation and restoration measures based on scientific evidence.