Thirty-two years of mangrove forest land cover change in Parita Bay, Panama

Abstract Mangrove forests have experienced a rapid decline. However, the rate of loss has decreased in recent years due to enhanced conservation and nature regeneration. The dynamics of mangrove forests in Panama have not been monitored since the year 2000, despite a significant loss during the 1980s. The objectives of our study were to quantify changes in mangrove cover and identify the dominant drivers of change in Parita Bay, Panama. Temporal changes in mangrove cover and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were determined using the supervised classification method on Landsat satellite images from 1987 to 2019. We identified a 4.7% increase in the mangrove area of Parita Bay during the 32 years; the mangrove forests were also considered healthy as reflected by high NDVI values. However, the conversion of mangroves to other land cover types resulted in a 1.26% decline in mangrove cover from 1987 to 1998. Moreover, the area of aquaculture and saltpans almost doubled during this period. During the following two decades, the conversion of other land cover classes (water, other vegetation, and bare soil) increased the mangrove area by 6%, and the annual rate of increase was greater during the second decade (0.43% year−1). From 2009 to 2019, mangroves declined at an annual rate of 0.11% in protected areas and increased at an annual rate of 0.50% in unprotected areas. Despite the regeneration potential of mangrove forests, our study highlights the need to continually manage and protect mangrove forests in order to facilitate their expansion in Parita Bay.