Mapping disturbance in mangrove ecosystems: Incorporating landscape metrics and PCA-based spatial analysis

Mangrove ecosystems are of high ecological value and occur in tropical subtropical coastal areas. They consist salt-tolerant woody plants highly complex productive. Here, a novel approach was developed to map disturbances evaluate the status Iranian mangroves based on multispectral WorldView-2 Sentinel-2 remote sensing techniques. A land cover generated that serves as basis assess changes composition structure mangrove ecosystems. The spatial disturbance index (SDI) calculated landscape metrics principal component analysis (PCA) order detect degraded Qeshm Island, Iran. comprised: (I) selection metrics, (II) definition hexagon cell scale, (III) completion PCA standardized values ​​of eight selected (IV) modeling SDI eigenvalues loading factor. For validation, variance inflation factor (VIF) used. results indicate best set key quantify comprises patch density (PD), total edge (TE), mean size (MPS), shape (MSI), Euclidean nearest neighbor distance (ENND), contagion (CONT), splitting (SPLIT), Shannon’s diversity (SHDI). first three components explained 87% (47%, 27%, 13%, respectively) information distribution, demonstrating effectiveness PCA. Then, index, five levels, ranging from very low disturbances, were identified. This enabled zonation has occurred region supports sustainable management future planning efforts, thus making their conservation more realistic.