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Mangrove forest conservation and development planning in Nghe An – Vietnam




4. RESULTS AND DISCUSION

4.1. Current status of Mangrove forest at study area
The survey was carried out with 37 coastal communes of Nghe An province. Mangrove forest area was recorded by GPS. Together with digital map, secondary data and satellite image, current status of land use can be displayed (table 1).

Table 1: Status land use in Nghe An province


Figure 1: Mangrove distribution and planning in Cua Lo

Nghe An province ha 819.63 ha mangrove forest. It distributed mainly on both sites the rivers flowing through six estuaries (Mai Giang, Hoang Mai, Thai, Bung, Lam River and Le Dynasty Channel).

There is a very diverse composition of mangrove species before 1985. Due to rapid shrimp farming development, the mangrove as well as aquatic resources have been over exploitated. In 1994 with the support of Japanese Red Cross Association, Nghe An province coastal area was carried out mangrove replanting with some successful results.

On the deposition sites of estuaries Con, Quyen, Thoi, Van Avicenniaceae is dominant because suitable salinity (25 – 30‰), and sand ratio is high as well. In the inter-tidal lands, the rich organic clays mangrove species are more diverse: Rhizophora stylosa, Bruguiera gymnorhiza, Kandelia candel. In some areas, there are species of Aegiceras corniculatum or Acanthus ilicifolius. Upper tidal areas are dominated by Ipomaea pes-carpae creating a fresh carpet along the coast. In the higher areas such as the areas closed to mountains or dykes dominance species are Acrosstichum aureum, Clerodendron inerme, Pandanus tectorius, Pluchea indica, Caesalpinia bonduc and other botanical carpets.

In the high tidal range areas Bruguiera gymnorhiza is dominantly seen with mangrove tree up to 3.5 m high and the bush is 5 m wide in diameter. Root systems is strongly developed, it is the winner in the competition with other species and become purebred. In the high tidal areas, the mangrove community includes the following species: Excoecaria agallocha, Cynodon dactylon, and Cyperus malaccensis. In the acid soil areas, salinity is about 5 - 15‰ like Hung Hoa, Quynh Dien the dominance species is Sonneratia caseolaris the height of tree is about 8 m and this is the indicator species of brackish water areas. In general, mangrove species have not changed much; however, the botanical carpet has changed from rich primitive cover (in 1985) to secondary botanical cover, brush or planted forests. Some places were clearly replaces by shrimp ponds like Quynh Lien 3.6 ha.

4.2. Institutional mechanism for rehabilitation and management
To identify the area and distribution of new planted mangrove, following aspects should be well considered: 1) natural conditions, 2) local management capacity and other stakeholders; 3) current and future trend of land use.

Recently, mangrove forest in Nghe An has been managed by the Province Red Cross Association. The reason is Japanese Red Cross supported for this project through the Provincial Red Cross. However, by the management point of view, mangrove forest in the province have to manage by the provice (By this structure Agriculture and Rural Development Department - DARD will manage mangrove forest within the province area). In fact Red Cross Association limited power and authority have many difficulties to implement mission.

Development policies
Mangrove conservation and reforestation is one of government policies. Other government policies have been also issued for poverty alleviation and rural development affecting mangrove forest management. For example, development sea products export policy initialize mangrove forest cutting down to build shrimp ponds. From the example, there is a need to calcify cross-cutting issue development policies to ensure the sustainable development.

Laws system impovement and enforcement
Based on laws of forest protection, environmental and natural resource conservation, many decisions and regulations are issued by the government. However, those issues documents are so general and have been applied differently by locals. There is a need to issue more papers that are suitable to the current status of the specific area. Laws, decision and regulation need to desseminate to local authorities and the farmers as soon as posible. The importance of mangrove forests ecosystem should be awared by local people. Punishment should be done stricly when individuals or groups violate the regulations.

Management mechanism
There are many questions associating to the mechanism of mangrove forest management should be answers. They mainly are why mangrove management fails in Vietnam? The answers would be: rights and responsibilities are not cleary defined on land use. For example, what are responsibilities of involved parties in mangrove planning process if the plan failed to be implemented? Or how resource in the forest should be exploited and who have the right? What sacsion will be applied for the individuals who violate the forest protection regulation? Problems would be solved if mangrove is managed by local authorities.

Farmers, mainly people who live in mangrove forest areas and their living depend on the forest such as fishing men; shrimp farmers will be given task of mangrove management. Rights and interests to those people are resource exploitation such as fish, firewood, and wood. Each area wills has proper regulation that is suitable to specific conditions.

Management capacity
One reason of unsussessful in mangrove forest management is the management ability/skills of all authority administrative levels. So in order to get the harmoniuous development of all economic sector in coastal areas there is a need to have qualified managers. The managers need to have a synthetic knowledges they should understand the development of one economic sector not harm to the others. The management ability is not easy to upgarde in the short time, so there is a need to have suitable education stratergy or training

Local people awareness
There are some recommended solutions in order to improve local people awareness that are to diseminate promotion broucher to local people the importance of mangrove forest and mangrove ecosystem with their living conditions. Training courses are needed in order to promote the important of mangrove forest and mangrove ecosystem to local people. Integrate the environment protection, mangrove forest conservation and rational natural resource uses education in to school. To mobilize mangrove forest protection plans in youths, students community. In the mangrove forest planing, it is need to have a fund to manage, promote and develop the mangrove area.

Incomes from shrimp farming
There is attractive income from shrimp farming. However, lessons come from other countries having higher development in shrimp farming other than Vietnam. In Taiwan, shrimp farming has breakdown in 1987. In Thailand, Indonesia and the Philipine there were disease bloom in the early of the 90s, and its serious accompanied crop loosing. Because of this damage the government of these countries has new views on shrimp industry; many shrimp ponds were left abundance for a long time in order to restore soil.

Recommended mangrove management framework
From the above discussion and analyzing, the outputs come up with managment framework for mangrove forest in Nghe An province, it displayed as figure 2 below.


Figure 2: Recommended mangrove management framework

4.3. Proposal for mangrove rehabilitation
Based on the potential tidal areas and the biological characteristics as well as institutional factors discussed above, the potential of 254.8 ha mangrove can be rehabilitated, which is allocated and planned in table 2 and table 3. Beside, 819.6 ha of mangrove forest available should be conserve and managed in continuation.

Table 2: New planted areas of mangrove forest


Figure 3: Mangrove distribution and planning in Quynh Loc, Quynh Phuong communes

Table 3: Implementing schedule

5. CONCLUSION
The results can be summarized as: Nghe An has total 819.6 ha of mangrove forest, accordingly, by district are Quynh Luu 343.8 ha, Dien Chau 260 ha, Nghi Loc 160 ha and Vinh 55.8 ha. Newly planned planting areas encompass 254.4 ha. There is a very high species diversity in the mangrove forests of Nghe An, with 39 species belonging to 19 different families being identified. In general, mangrove species distribution is Rhizophora stylosa, Kandelia candel, Bruguiera gymnorhiza, Avicennia marina and Sonneratia caseolaris. The application of Remote Sensing and GIS in data collection, data analyzing and constructing planning maps brought excellent results. Current maps and planning maps were built with the scale of 1:10,000. The project also developed planning implementation, conservation and development guidelines based on the local conditions.

6. REFERENCE
  • Ho Pham Hoang, 1991 – 1993. Vietnamese plants volume I, II, III.
  • Hong Phan Nguyen,1991. Vietnam mangrove forest cover. PhD Dissertation .
  • Ke Le Kha et al,1969 – 1976. Common seen plants in Vietnam” volume I – VI.
  • Tang Vu Trung,1994. Vietnam estuaries ecosystem exploitation and uses page 251 – 254. Science and Technology Publishcation13.
  • Umali R.M. et all 1987(Editorial board). UNDP/UNESCO, Mangrove of Asia and the Pacific: Status and mangement, 538p.
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