Biodiversity assessment of mangrove forest ecosystems in tropical coastal regions

Abstract

Mangrove forests are marine ecosystems with a high ecological significance, having crucial services such as stabilizing the shore, carbon-sequestration, and shelter to various aquatic organisms. The current study was a determination of the accessed tropical coastal mangrove locations to measure the trends of biodiversity, which were conducted based on the use of statistical analysis. Field surveys were carried out along with environmental parameters and vegetation sampling and the metrics of biodiversity were introduced Shannon-Wiener Index (H), Simpson Diversity Index (D), and Pielou Evenness Index (J); to measure species richness, diversity, and the structure of the community. The environmental field survey and statistical test outcomes showed that there was spatial variability on biodiversity in that the undisturbed studies had significantly higher values on H (up to 3.42) and D (up to 0.91) and that was an indication of a stable and heterogeneous species composition. On the other hand, the disturbed and degraded sites had a lower value of diversity and overgrew species that have stress tolerant characteristics. Correlation analysis revealed that soil organic matter had a strong positive correlation with species richness (r = 0.74) and negative correlation with salinity (r = 0.62), which is an indication of the effect of abiotic factors on biodiversity distribution. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) showed that salinity, soil texture and organic carbon were salient drivers of the environmental variables that explained 78.6 percent overall variance among sites. These were the results of these analyses that show that both environmental gradients and anthropogenic activities are not only significant factors that can influence the dynamics of mangrove communities, but that also should be the target of conservation activities.