TDA-IME Project Final Report June, 2013 This broader geographical coverage also has practical value, because China, Indonesia and Myanmar each share transboundary mangrove areas with the Indochina countries (Myanmar with Thailand, China with Viet Nam, Indonesia with Malaysia). 16 FIGURE 1: Map of the Indochina region and the Philippines, showing the project participating countries (in green), plus Myanmar, southern China and Indonesia as far eastwards as Bali (in blue); the coloured areas form a recognized biogeographical region: the Indomalaya Ecozone. Definition of Mangroves Applied in the Project In his pioneering review of the flora and fauna of mangrove swamps, William MacNae (1968) described use of the name “mangroves” to mean either “…a community of trees or shrubs which grow in the sea” or “any one of the individual species which constitute that association”. In recent decades the concept of mangroves as a coastal ecosystem - rather than just a community of plants (which MacNae termed the mangal) - has evolved. Appropriately, the term mangrove ecosystem takes into account the important physical structure of the mangroves, including mud banks (levees) and mud flats, plus the many creeks and other small waterways that permeate mangrove forests. It also includes the physio-chemical and biological processes that function at ecosystem level, plus vast populations of mangroveassociated animals, especially the marine aquatic fauna, that contribute substantially to the livelihood and nutritional needs of millions of traditional coastal fisherfolk in Indochina. Defining the mangroves as an ecosystem is also fundamental to their effective conservation, restoration/rehabilitation and sustainable management, which is most likely to be achieved through an ecosystem-based approach (MEA, 2005; Macintosh et al., 2011). One important reason for advocating this approach is that the physio-chemical and biological processes that
Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis of Indochina Mangrove Ecosystems
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