Researcher at The University of Cambridge and global environment nonprofit The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have published a 10 m resolution map of Earth’s tidal marshes
Tidal marshes are productive coastal ecosystems that are important to human wellbeing and biodiversity. Moreover, The marshes store carbon in their soils for millennia, making them crucial contributors to climate change mitigation efforts
These ecosystems have been jeopardised by human activities mainly because of the growth of coastal populations
Understand where tidal marshes are and how much they have been protected by each country is important to identify new opportunity for conservation initiatives and policies, assess the progress toward conservation targets and monitor their status
The map is available through google earth engine
We estimate that over 47,7% (1499 km2 ) of the ACPs 3140 km2 of tidal marshes are found within the boundaries of protected areas. In the Conservation Tracking tool it is possible to have first glance of the tidal protection by country and the tidal extent in any protected areas in sqkm.
Analysis performed by Simona Lippi. BIOPAMA APIs
Worthington, T. A., M. Spalding, E. Landis, T. L. Maxwell, A. Navarro, L. S. Smart, and N. J. Murray. 2023. The distribution of global tidal marshes from earth observation data. bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2023.05.26.542433