Monitoring damage and recovery of mangrove forests after the 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh using remote sensing

抄録

The Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26th 2004 completely devastated the coastal region of Banda Aceh and severely damaged the coastal ecosystem, including mangroves. The damage and recovery of the coastal vegetation was assessed using time series remote sensing data on Google Earth; the progress of vegetation recovery after the tsunami was also examined. Mangrove distribution was observed using visual interpretation of high spatial resolution images taken in June 2004, in January 2005, in June 2009, in May 2011 and in May 2013. The area covered by mangroves in 2013 was 60.35% of that in 2004. The vegetation has slowly but steadily recovered from the disaster. Although the area of mangroves near estuaries was relatively large (26.83 ha) before the tsunami, it was still only 15.23% of that area in 2013.