A Study on Temporal Health of Mangrove Forest to Identify the Pattern of Degradation and Subsequent Management Options for Indian Sundarbans Using Geo-Informatics

The present research study is associated with the study of mangrove ecosystem of Indian Sundarbans encompassing the change detection analysis of the continued mangrove degradation using geo-informatics giving a temporal health layout of mangroves also recommending subsequent management strategies for preventing existing and further mangrove degradation. Supervised classification using MLC algorithm is used to ascertain that land cover classes are Dense Forest, Degraded Forest, Tidal Creek, Water Body and Open Land that entails the changes in areal coverage e.g. dense forest area declined by 34.16% (1989–2008) and increased slightly by 18.65% (2008–2020), degraded forest area drastically increased by 316.51% (1989–2008) and decreased by 46.90% (2008–2020); Tidal creek area declined by 30.04% (1989–2008) and increased by 180.48% (2008–2020); water body area increased by 13.2% (1989–2008)and declined by 18.85% (2008–2020); open land area declined by 16.59% (1989–2008) and increased by 24.27% (2008–2020).Several vegetation indices were used to assess the health conditions of mangrove which entails that major stressed and deteriorated mangrove cover lies at the western part of Indian Sundarbans. Present study also recommended proper and genuine conservation measures e.g. mangrove regeneration techniques so that future researchers can start over from this section and make a great orientation towards mangrove restoration against the mangrove degradation irrespective of mangrove’s temporal health conditions.