Assessment of carbon sequestration in mangrove and human activities

Mangroves play an important role in the environment. It provides an excellent habitat for several species of plants and animals especially crab, reduce wave height, and especially, prize carbon and store. In Madagascar, mangroves covered 300.000Ha of the surface, contains Africa’s fourth largest extent of mangroves and 1Ha can store 3.700 tons of CO2, so around 1 billion of CO2 stored. In Indonesia, mangroves covered 35.000 ha of its surface and 1Ha can store just 1.000 tons of CO2. It means that the absorption capacity of CO2 in the plants depends on its chemical composition. In fact the species of Mangrove in Madagascar has a high capacity to store CO2. The big island has mainly eight species of mangroves: Avicennia marina, Sonneratia alba, Rhizophora mucronata, Ceriops tagal, Bruguiera gymnorrhiza, Xylocarpus granatum, Lumnitzera racemosa, Heritiera littoralis. and in Indonesia five but three of them are dominated: Avicennia, Rhizophora, Sonneratia, Bruguiera ou Nypa. In northern part of Madagascar, some mining activity is one of main mangrove destruction because miners take some precious stones in over 20 ha which localized the demantoid. In addition 200Ha of mangroves were destroyed for processing in charcoal. The rate of degradation every 10 years is 0,2%. They are not aware that the destruction of mangroves causes significant climate change and global warming. Knowing that global atmospheric carbon concentration is 30 billion tones. This high concentration on CO2 increases the amount of solar heat retained by the earth. Human activities caused an important impact of mangrove degradation.

Author(s): RASOAMALALA Vololonirina 

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