Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Mangrove Ecosystem Monitoring Using Remote Sensing and Environmental Data

Abstract

Mangrove ecosystems play a critical role in coastal protection, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation; however, increasing anthropogenic pressures and environmental changes have accelerated mangrove degradation, creating an urgent need for efficient and scalable monitoring approaches. This study aims to develop an Artificial Intelligence-Enabled framework for monitoring mangrove ecosystem conditions by integrating remote sensing imagery with environmental datasets to improve the accuracy and timeliness of ecosystem assessment in tropical coastal regions. The proposed method combines multispectral satellite images, including vegetation indices derived from remote sensing data, with environmental variables such as temperature, precipitation, salinity, and tidal information, which are subsequently processed using a deep learning-based classification model to identify and categorize mangrove health conditions. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the integration of remote sensing and environmental data significantly enhances model performance compared with approaches relying solely on satellite imagery, achieving high classification accuracy and improving the detection of early signs of ecosystem degradation. The findings further reveal that environmental parameters contribute substantially to distinguishing healthy, moderately degraded, and severely degraded mangrove areas across heterogeneous coastal environments. Consequently, the proposed framework provides an intelligent and reliable decision support tool for environmental monitoring agencies and policymakers while contributing to the development of resilient coastal ecosystem management and sustainable environmental governance in tropical archipelagic regions.