Mangrove Forests: Distribution, Species Diversity, Roles, Threats and Conservation Strategies

Mangroves are globally recognized for their ecological, economic, social, and cultural importance. They provide a variety of goods and services to humanity. Mangroves are a group of trees and shrubs sheltered in the intertidal zones of tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions of the planet. They are adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions such as salinity, waterlogging, and inundation. They also are one of the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on earth as they support the existence of a large number of organisms. Despite multiple goods and ecological services they deliver, mangrove ecosystems are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems because of several threats such as overexploitation, conversion, and encroachment of mangrove habitats for agricultural and settlement purposes, a decline in freshwater and silt deposition, heavy metal pollution, global warming, and sea level rise. This chapter provides important recent developments in the mangrove distribution, species diversity, diverse goods and services that they provide, threats to their survival, policies and global initiatives for their conservation, and challenges associated with conservation and restoration programs.