CIMA researcher Sónia Cristina, in collaboration with Daina Mathai from the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, USA, and Margaret Owuor from the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern in Switzerland, published her recent work about the critical role of ecosystem services in supporting local communities. Understanding the spatial distribution of these services is essential for effective natural resource management. In the study, the ESMatrix approach and leverage freesatellitedata from the Sentinel-2 mission were used to highlight the flow of ecosystem services from mangroves in Ungwana Bay, Kenya. These mangroves face significant pressure due to salt harvesting, which is one of the major drivers of change in the region. Findings address the challenge of data scarcity by utilizing remote sensing techniques. The article, titled "Spatial Distribution of Ecosystem Services in Mangroves of Ungwana Bay, Kenya: A Remote Sensing Approach," has been published in the journal 'Remote Sensing', from MDPI.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15071802
