Climate Change Triggers Australian Mangrove Die-Off
Thousands of hectares of mangroves in Australia's remote north have died, scientists said Monday, with climate change the likely cause.
Some 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres), or nine percent of the mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, perished in just one month according to researchers from Australia's James Cook University, the first time such an event has been recorded.
The so-called dieback—where mangroves are either dead or defoliated—was confirmed by aerial and satellite surveys and was likely to have been the result of an extended drought period, said Norm Duke, a mangrove ecologist from James Cook University.
"This is what climate change looks like. You see things push the maximums or minimums... what we are looking at here is an unusually long dry season," Duke told AFP.
Bachellier Christian