IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific

Hsing-Juh Lin, Chuan-Wen Ho, Luzhen Chen, Ena Suarez

Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes intertidal forests and shrublands of the marine ecoregions of the East China Sea, that extend across China, Taiwan and South Korea. The Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangrove province mapped extent in 2023 was 6.83 km2, representing 0.0038% of the global mangrove area.
This ecoregion is characteriszed by four species of true mangroves, plus many associated taxa. Kandalia obovata is the dominant mangrove species, while Avicennia marina, Aegiceras corniculatum, and Excoecaria agallocha are only observed sparsely. The Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangroves are mainly scattered estuarine formations.
Today the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangroves covers 93% more area than our broad estimation for 1970. The mangrove area of Taiwan has increased by 253% since 1976. The mangrove area of Zhejiang, China has increased 48 times since 1957. Furthermore, under a high sea-level rise scenario (IPCC RCP 8.5) ≈-0.4% of the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangroves would be submerged by 2060. Moreover, 18.2% of the province’s mangrove ecosystem is undergoing degradation, with the potential to increase to 42.8% within a 50-year period, based on a vegetation index decay analysis. Overall, the Warm Temperate Northwest Pacific mangrove ecosystem is assessed as Least Concern (LC)