Mangroves🌏🍃| Battle month | 01

Hey steemians!

Today I am going to share one of the floral environments. Trees are a very important part of our lives. Today 20% of the floral distribution is saved in the world. But mangroves are distributed in 1.5% of world tropical natural forests. Mangrove forests are a kind of floral environment distributed in nearshore areas.

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Best mangroves can be found in Asia. 🌏 Mostly in India and Bangladesh. The largest mangrove forest is in the Sunderbans. In Sri Lanka largest mangrove forest in Puttalam lagoon. Mangroves are grown in saline coastal sediments. Those are salt-loving plants. It is called "halophytes". Trees have a medium size of height and flowering plants. All are adapted to the intertidal condition ( interface between land and sea). Mangroves wrap the coastal line as skin.

We can found 6 types of mangrove forests. There are riverine mangrove forests, Overwashed mangrove forests, fringe mangrove forests, hammock mangrove forests, basin mangrove forests, dwarf mangrove forests. These mangrove forests can see variations of forest height and distribution variations. It is mainly caused by the nutrient concentrations of the mangrove forest.

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Several hypotheses use to classify mangroves. Generally geomorphological, vegetation, and physiochemical conditions use in this zonation. White mangroves, black mangroves, and red mangroves are 3 zonations in mangrove forest areas.

Mangroves have various types of roots. They are prop roots, stilt roots, tube-like breathing roots, and knee roots. Roots adapted to salinity in seawater, flooding stress, low oxygen concentration, soil composition, etc.

Mangroves have so many ecological functions. Mangroves are a long-term carbon sink. Photosynthesis can capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide. Dead biomass can accumulate and convert to organic and inorganic carbon in this ecosystem.

Wetland is the largest store of carbon in the soil. But mangrove is the most carbon-rich ecosystem on the planet. Mangroves can play an important role in global climate regulation.
Mangrove ecosystems provide the nursery habitat for fish, prawns, and crabs. Most migratory birds can visit the mangrove ecosystem.
The one of main ecological functions is protection from waves, tides, and storms. Mangroves protect coastal erosion as a physical barrier. It can protect the water quality and filter unwanted materials.

Now we are moving to the economical benefits in the mangroves. The parts of mangrove trees can be used to make various types of products. There are textiles, leather, dye, fishing boats, rubber, medicine, honey, wax, drugs, and beverages, etc. In medicine, Bruguera sp is used to reducing blood pressure. Mangroves can be used to treat viral diseases like AIDS.

Unfortunately day by day the mangrove ecosystem is one of the most threatened on the planet due to natural and anthropogenic activities.

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We can't stop natural disasters but we can overcome anthropogenic activities like over-harvesting, pollution, grazing, dredging, large-scale development, etc.

#slbmc