Area of mangrove forest (square kilometers), by marine ecoregion.
We extracted mangrove forest extents from version 3.0 of the global polygon data set compiled by UNEP-WCMC in collaboration with the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems (ISME) 1997 (for more information about the source data set, e-mail spatialanalysis@unep-wcmc.org). These are almost entirely the same data that were published in the first World Mangrove Atlas (Spalding et al. 1997). We updated this information to include eleven island ecoregions for which no mapped data were available, but where mangroves occur with low mangrove coverage. Information on these was drawn from new work to be included in the publication of a new World Mangrove Atlas (Spalding et al. Forthcoming).
These data were derived by The Nature Conservancy, and were displayed in a map published in The Atlas of Global Conservation (Hoekstra et al., University of California Press, 2010). More information at http://nature.org/atlas.
Data derived from:
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). 1997. Data on mangrove extent, v.3.0. Cambridge: Author. Digital media.
A published version of these data was produced in the following work:
Spalding, M. D., F. Blasco, and C. D. Field. 1997. World Mangrove Atlas. Okinawa, Japan: International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems.