Mémoire
| Résumé : | Mangrove forests are one of the most productive ecosystems on earth, also providing many social-ecological services. Despite the importance of this ecosystem, it has been calculated that around one third of the world's mangroves have disappeared. The mangrove zone in the south of Honduras covers a practically uninterrupted strip of land that extends from the border with Nicaragua in the east to the border with El Salvador in the west. This area has been under great anthropogenic pressure, especially in the last four decades from the aquaculture sector and expansion of human settlements. Remote sensing analysis can help in the assessment of the forest cover area especially in large areas. This thesis assessed the change in the extension of mangrove forest and change of land cover in the south of Honduras. Landsat images were analysed using the semi-automatic plugin in Qgis and the maximum likelihood method from 1974 until 2021 with a period of five years between analyses. During the studied period at least a 14% of the mangroves cover have been lost, from an area of 373.49 km2 in 1974 to 319.72 km2 in the first trimester of 2021 with a net loss of 53.77 km2. Meanwhile the aquaculture sector has increased its area from zero square kilometres in 1974 to 245 km2. With the use of ground information and remote sensing data better courses of action can be established to protect those invaluable resources and the species that depend on them, including humans |
