SPATIO-TEMPORAL MAPPING AND ANALYSIS OF MANGROVE EXTENTS AROUND MANILA BAY USING LANDSAT SATELLITE IMAGERY AND MANGROVE VEGETATION INDEX (MVI).

Mangroves are considered one of the most undervalued ecosystems in the world. It provides shelter to a wide range of species and protection from natural hazards to coastal communities. The Philippines, being a country with long coastlines, benefits greatly from mangroves. Historically, it had 400,000–500,000 hectares of mangroves forest in 1920, which declined to 120,000 hectares in 1994 due to rapid industrialization, particularly the conversion of these forests into aquaculture such as fishponds Mangrove forest in the Philippines saw a rapid decline between 1920 and 1994 due to aquaculture conversion and land reclamation Mangrove Vegetation Index (MVI), an established mangrove detection algorithm, was applied on Landsat satellite images of Manila Bay to map the extent of the mangrove forest from 1990 to 2020. Thirteen time-series maps were produced. Area computation showed that the coastline of Bulacan had the most mangroves, while the coastline of Metro Manila had the least throughout the years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]