Maintaining mangroves to save coastlines

Design Research on Jakarta's coastline

Mangroves play a significant role in the coast's natural protection. However, mangroves are also in danger due to climate change, waste coverage, and the poor success rate of mangrove restoration.

In this research, I focused on how we might solve a part of this huge critical issue by utilising and maintaining existing resources, natural or man-made, even further to protect our coast. The goal of the potential solution is to integrate an existing coral monitoring device capabilities for mangroves and make it simple to manage and monitor mangroves remotely.

Role

This research was created as a part of an individual assignment in the Master of Design Innovation and Technology at RMIT.

2023
MDIT

THE PROBLEM

What is happening with Jakarta?

Jakarta is known to flood since a long time ago, however, the fact that Jakarta will sink is inevitable, for now. Each year, the sea level rises around 2,5mm, and at the same time, Jakarta’s land is gradually setting down by around 5-10 cm each year.

It is predicted that Jakarta would start to sink in 2050 and 160,4 km2 would drown, which is 24.3% of Jakarta’s land area. The sea level in 2100 would reach almost half of Jakarta’s land area and is predicted to take up 52% of the population, which is 5 million (Earth.org 2020).

Even though the year 2100 is still far away, if there are no actions taken now, would it be worse?

Prediction of Sea Level Rise in 2100

Sea Level Rise Projection Map – Jakarta, 2020,  Earth.org. recreated by Margaritha Jessica

CAUSES

Factors affecting the sinking of Jakarta

Many factors create this bigger problem. Floods mainly happen because of huge precipitation levels, however, what happens with Jakarta is that it’s sinking by having the land subsidence and sea level rising at the same time.

Factor that caused Jakarta to sink are classed into 3:

Sea level rising

With glaciers melting as an impact of the climate change, ocean volume expands causing the sea level to rise. It also creates significant decline in the amount of liquid on land and damages the sea and coastal ecosystem.

Land subsidence

Excessive groundwater drainage has been a problem that is slowly taken care of by  limiting groundwater usage and creating more easy access to piped water. The infrastructure factor is inevitable since Jakarta is a central of economies which have heavy skyscrapers built in the past.

Human factors

The poorly built urban-planning of Jakarta was created due to the poor long-term vision in shaping the city. Reclamations have been one of the projects that the government have been doing. These issues causes uncontrolled usage of lands and could damage the sea and coastal ecosystem

COASTAL LANDUSE

Jakarta's coastal landuse

Jakarta has 6 coastal areas, which are Penjaringan, Pademangan, Tanjung Priok, Koja, Cilincing, and the Thousand Islands. Each areas have different things to offer and has similarities with one and another

Mangroves

Benefits of Mangroves

Mangrove is an intertidal plant that is found in tropical and subtropical climate areas along shallow coasts 30° N or S of the equator, as they cannot survive in cold temperatures.

The Value of Mangroves, 2021,  Wild Conservation Society. recreated by Margaritha Jessica

3 most important functions of mangroves for the ecosystem and for humans

Climate regulation

Trees play a vital part in the regulation of the climate as they decrease temperatures through providing shade and increase rainfall by releasing and storing water vapour. The roots of mangroves are excellent in keeping sediments in place and the leaves, wood, and roots are also good in storing carbon.

Coastal protection

By limiting the flow of soil and sediment into the sea, mangroves shield the coastline from erosion.  Additionally, mangroves decrease the impact of waves on the shore. This is significant in considering the threat caused by climate change's severe weather and rising sea levels.

Water desalination

Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees. To thrive in salt water, it manages water and ion intake at the roots, which converts salt water into fresh water. This might be a further possible solution to the issue of excessive groundwater drainage as Mangroves desalinate water into fresh water.

Jakarta’s mangroves

Threats to Jakarta's mangroves

Mangroves are natural coastal protection resource that is essential to Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia places as the number one country with the largest mangrove forest area, which is around 3,2 million hectare or 22,6% of the total mangrove forest area in the world.

Environmental Sensitivity Map for the Coastal and Marine Areas of the Jakarta Bay, 2015,  Ministry of Environment and Forestry of Indonesia.
recreated by Margaritha Jessica

Based on a research done by Azzahra PR et al (2022), the mangroves measured in the Jakarta Mangrove Resort have a slight difference between the 3 classes of density, which are rare, moderate, and dense. Measuring with the Mangrove Health Index (MHI), it was found that the rare and moderate mangrove communities placed in moderate, while the dense mangrove communities are healthy. On the other hand, based on the Mangrove standing structure (CHDNCV), the rare mangrove communities placed in fair, while the moderate and dense mangrove communities placed in good.

Threats to the mangrove ecosystem in Jakarta, controllable or not

Climate change

Even though mangroves are resilient to sea level rise, they require just the right quantity of sea water. They will dry out if there is too little water, but they will drown if there is too much.  Sea level rise transforms  and threatens the areas mangroves can grow and are most needed.

Waste coverage

One of the major threats to Jakarta's mangrove ecology is plastic waste. Mangroves are a great place to capture for plastic wastes that goes from and to the sea. This could worsen soil erosion, increasing the quantity and rapidity of sediment and soil movement.

Low percentage of successful mangrove restoration rate

Mangrove restoration has an estimation of 51% seedling survival rate, it often fails because they  restored the wrong species in unsuitable sites. The mangroves must be managed, used, and interacted with to ensure the restoration could be successful.

ISSUE IDENTIFIED

If existing mangrove ecosystems aren’t taken care of, instead of protecting the coast, mangroves will be threatened with extinction, considering the fact that Jakarta is predicted to sink starting in 2050. Action should be taken from now on to preserve the ecosystem of mangroves in Jakarta.

PRECedent a

MonMang: Monitoring Mangrove

MonMang (Monitoring Mangrove) is a mobile app launched by the Oceanography Research Centre at the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia in 2020. This app assists research, monitoring, and public awareness of mangroves. It provides tools to record datas, measuring, and analyse datas on site.

MonMang 2.0, 2021,  The National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia

In 2020, MonMang provides fundamental data about mangrove’s structure parameter for forest monitoring, strong mangrove cover value based on hemispherical photography method, mangrove health index (MHI) and threat quantification.

In the most recent version launched in 2021, MonMang  2.0 included a feature called Automated Mangrove Species Identification (AMSI), which allows users analyse different mangrove species using AI by taking a photo of the mangrove tree. and it would show general details of the captured mangrove tree. Additionally, the app provides details on the spatial and temporal distribution of various analytical parameters, such the functional vegetation index, carbon stock, and mangrove health index (MHI).

Data needed to collect alongside with the MonMang app

PRECedent B

Coral RASA

Coral bleaching is one of the critical issues happening with coral reefs now. It is a result of factors such as temperature, light or nutrients.  To tackle with the issue of coral bleaching, Derek Bennion designed Coral RASA, a coral reef monitoring device.

Derek Bennion, 2021,  Coral RASA

Coral RASA is equipped with:

360° rotational camera

Broadcasts eight hours of video online each day and records one hour of video each day for three weeks.

Water Tester

Takes water samples once every day for 3 weeks

Hydrophone

Picks up acoustics from the coral reefs’ surrounding areas to help identify the types of species that are living in the area

Coral bleaching alert

The thermochromic paint on the battery reacts quickly to coral bleaching, changing colour before the corals do. It assists to better mitigation and more successful coral bleaching preservation.

CORAL RASA's DEsign goal

Minimising the amount of dives needed,
Maximising the amount of data collected.

POTential solution

Combining precedents

MonMang is a great tool for tracking data related to mangroves, but actual site visits are required to manually measure the data each time users want to analyse and determine the health of the mangroves. On the other hand, Coral RASA supports the collecting of data on coral reefs’ health without having to visit the location by providing online real-time data retrieved by the device planted beneath the sea.

design challengE

How might we integrate Coral RASA’s capability in providing remote data collection to receive data needed to assess, maintain, and track mangrove’s health?

More Work