Abstract
The startling rate of biodiversity loss, particularly in ecologically delicate coastal environments, is a major environmental concern facing the globe today. As sustainable exploitation of natural resources, including timber and other forest products from tropical rainforests and mangrove habitats, is crucial this research will examine the factors and processes that degrade mangrove habitats -in terms of their health and resilience -and suggest ways to reduce human impact. The study evaluates the evolution of Sundarbans—the largest contiguous mangrove forest in the world—coastal habitat quality from 2017 to 2022 using the InVEST and machine learning-based ANN model. The mangrove habitat sustained heavy destruction, including structural damage from the landfall of cyclone Amphan in May 2020. Spatial auto-correlation method and Geotagging were employed for location-dependent habitat quality analysis. Study demonstrates that habitat quality and degradation vary significantly across the Sundarbans mangrove forest provinces, particularly for habitat quality spatial distribution and their degradation. Important determinants for habitat quality are per capita water usage, night-time light index (proxy for population density), forest area, and prevalence of fragmented and degrading forest area. All factor pairings are bifactor or non-linear enhanced, showing that impact of two variables combined is more powerful than one alone in determining ecosystem quality and degeneration. In particular, forest land coverage and per capita water consumption have strong correlations with the habitat quality in the region. Geographical disparity of habitat quality and its probable causes suggests an urgent need for system-wide approach in implementing conservation and restoration measures for preserving Sundarbans mangroves, which spread across the international boundary between India and Bangladesh.
