 Good morning everybody. So today is the third event of this mangrove conference. We have two good very productive days of discussions presentation talks deliberations on mangrove research, covering both blue carbon ecosystem so the first day team was about mangrove as nature based solution to climate change. And then yesterday we talked about mangroves for coastal resilience and biodiversity conservation, where we discussed about the values of mangrove ecosystem service they provide the necessary function they provide to the communities living in the coastal areas by serving as protection from extreme events, tsunamis and winds and a lot of livelihood opportunities that mangrove ecosystem provide. Today on 10th December, the third day of our event, the team is recent advances in mangrove research and future perspectives. Here we would like to see how all the scientific research conducted both on bio physical aspects of mangrove as well as socio economic aspects of mangrove, how those that that information that knowledge can help in translating into better policy decisions, better solutions to our challenges, and we will have discussions also in terms of some knowledge gaps still existing opportunities that exist. And where could we go further in terms of the direction for research in terms of collaborating between various partner organizations researchers practitioners. So, today's team is thought to be sort of bringing all of these pieces together, and where we want to go from here. What are the steps that we need to take, who are the right partners who are the institution that could be instrumental in in forging that path. So, with that idea in mind, I'm very happy to welcome all our guests, all our source people and a large number of audience and participants who have been with us throughout this to last two days and joined us today as well from all over the world. So let me first start by saying greetings to everyone. Very warm good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you who are here with us today in this conference. And with that, I will open the event by inviting our first speaker, Dr. Rajshri Dasgupta, who will provide welcome address to everyone. Let me introduce Dr. Dasgupta. First, he is a senior policy researcher in the integrated sustainability center of the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies. This is an environmental think tank based in Hayama, Japan. He majored in multiple field based action research related to landscape ecology, sustainability planning and worked extensively with foresters and mangrove communities in multiple south and south Asian countries, particularly in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Philippines. Dr. Dasgupta has authored and co-authored nearly 50 peer reviewed papers in various international journals and edited several books. In the following book titled, Assessing Mapping and Modeling Mangrove Ecosystem Services is Expected in the mid 2022. So just few more months. Dr. Dasgupta is serving as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessment on Sustainable Use of Pile Species. And he's a contributing author for IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Working Group 2. He also serves as visiting associate professor at Institute of Future Initiative, the University of Tokyo, and a guest lecturer at United Nations University, Tokyo. So we have, we are absolutely honored by your presence here and I hand overflow to you to provide welcome address. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Rupesh. Am I audible? Yes. Thank you so much. So thank you so much, Dr. Nehru and Dr. Rupesh for inviting me to this August assembly and your nice and generous introduction. So distinguished professors, scientists, researchers and practitioners, Namaskar and a very good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone who is joining to this virtual conference from across the world. It is indeed my pleasure and privilege to share the stage with some of the best known man group experts that I know from India as well as abroad. Personally, I have learned a lot from this from their research work, as well as very engaging presentation since the last two days. Today's session focus on the recent advancement in man group research and future directions, which is really important and timely topic, particularly for researchers like us. There are some time differences and other official obligations. I tried to follow most of the presentation over the past few two days. And I must say that some of the research, particularly by Professor Kathirajan and Professor Soudha Manidas was actually well ahead of their time. In fact, if you see the concept of eco-deer, which is going around currently, Professor Kathirajan's landmark paper on mangroves mitigated tsunami, or Professor Das' work on Orissa cyclone and the role of mangroves. I think they were well ahead of time and set the tune for some of the research topic that we are taking today. So as Dr. Rupesh already mentioned that as a policy researchers on broadly working on natural research conservation, I'd like to say that mangrove the new opportunities and challenges in mangrove research, particularly from a policy planner's perspective and what kind of methods and what kind of scientific tools you can use to bridge those gaps. So let me take you to three of three global sustainability agendas. For example, since 2015 we have seen the Sendai framework for disaster reduction. Then we have seen the sustainable development goals, and we are expected to see the new IT targets, the CBD targets in 2022. So if we look closely, conservation and regeneration of mangroves cuts across all these three major global agenda. For example, it is now established that mangroves, I think it's more than established that mangroves reduce coastal flood rigs, it reduce the intensity of storm surges of flooding, and provide strong protection during coastal hazards. And of course it has a direct coincidence as Professor Kathira Sena has found and numerous research across the world found that it has direct correlation in reducing loss of life and damage. And moreover, these are extremely efficient as well as cost effective, particularly when we see from a developing or least developed countries perspective. So now if we take the Sendai framework for disaster itself for say, so it strongly advocates for fostering ecosystem best strategies for as a disaster extraction measure. And of course mangroves undoubtedly tops the list, particularly in Asia which is the largest coastline. Recently we did a review for mangrove ecosystem services and how it contributes to other like sustainable development goals. We classified more than 200 papers to understand how the ban go ecosystem services, particularly contribute to localization of sustainable development goals. And we found a broad range of SDGs in particular three SDGs like SDGs 12 that is responsible consumption and production. And three very important climate action and SDG 15, which showed very strong correlation with the performance of mangrove ecosystem services. So, again, I'm saying this because we have this global sustainability agent does at one hand, a mangrove conservation, none of the hand, but that is very strong overlap. We say the IT conservation targets which is again very important biodiversity targets which will be taken in 2022, at least four targets for example target six, which is the unsustainable fisheries target 11 on protection measures ecological target 15 which is on ecosystem restoration and resilience and target 19 which is knowledge on science and technology. So all this for the IT conservation targets are related to mangroves, and there are some recent papers we talked about the despite very good progress being made over this for component but there are these targets are still unmade. So again, it does doesn't require to discuss how important mangroves are from the climate mitigation perspective you all know that that carbon sequester for example the carbon sequester and potential for mangrove is five other than any other tropical forest and rightfully the mangrove occupies the central agenda for his best mitigation, but given that we are very concerned with climate mitigation but at the same time. It is also important to account and mainstream the for the role of mangrove ecosystem service and their contribution in ecosystem is adaptation measures, which is really really important and for fostering the ecosystem based adaptation measures. It is also important to know how the future delivery of mangrove ecosystem will be. For example, I think you might recall a paper from Professor Dukes, who mentioned like, I think it is in 2007. I mentioned that maybe the mangrove ecosystem service will completely annihilate in then by the next century. So although these projections may be a bit arbitrary, but it is important to locally assess the future state of mangrove ecosystem services to foster any any sort of adaptation strategy in postal areas. So in this regard I'd like to bring a little bit of the context of IPBS which is where I work as one of the lead author. So IPBS or Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform and Biodiversity Ecosystem Services actually called for using the scenarios and models to better understand the possibility of future delivery of ecosystem services. So we as like a policy researchers we have actually done some research on this in this line. So we have recently concluded an important multiple deep project where WII is one of our partner to monitor the future availability of mangrove ecosystem services using state-of-the-art simulation techniques. We have collaborated with many other research institute, particularly from Asia and Pacific in Fiji, Taiwan, Philippines and of course from India. So we have worked very closely with WII in the Andaman Islands and with Erkanika and try to understand how the diverse developmental possibility brings down or engage the mangrove like increase the mangrove ecosystem services. And we have used a special expertise scenario so that the local policy planners can read those maps and use it for their policy planning purpose. So as a policy planner as well as as a special scientist I'm really excited and I am sure that you might share the same kind of excitement to see the recent advancement in technical tools and data, which is I'm sure going to revolutionize the mangrove research. For example, we have much better remote sensing data and models today. In fact, the drones has spread a very important part of mangrove monitoring methodology. I'm sure you'll be discussing all this in today's session. So despite this I'd like to conclude with one important thing and I think for the last two days different researchers and professors have talked on this. So what very important is to manage the man in the mangrove. So despite all of our good research and we have published thoroughly on mangrove ecosystem services, we have to consider the how to manage the mangrove with involving the local communities. And that is what I think Professor Catherine also mentioned, and many other researchers have mentioned. And also I have, I have also feel our strong feeling that we have so far been a little bit biased towards mangrove regulating services, not really considered the other services like provisioning and supporting services and particularly cultural services into the planning context or policy planning context. I was really, really happy to see some of our researchers presented yesterday was talking about socio cultural values of mangroves. So it was really, really very good. So I really feel like in future people will more work on this kind of cultural ecosystem services. Last but not the least, the future of mangroves will depend how we involve the local communities over it. And of course the national level policy whatever we say that will help. Everything boils down to the sustainable coexistence between people and mangrove. So you know that many cases in Asia, the conservation efforts failed because the lack of community participation, despite of good policies. I think it is more important for us and people like who are engaged into mangrove research to direct research in more meaningful engagement of communities in mangrove conservation. Lastly, I think one of the major important aspect to foster mangrove research is a global partnership. So you know that many of the mangrove ecosystem services are transboundary in nature, a bit in Sundarbans or in Africa. This systems while being ecologically connected but remains fragmented under different management regime. Therefore it is really important to foster the transboundary partnership. So these are some of the points I thought are very important for future research but I'm looking really looking forward to the engaging discussions today. So with this, let me welcome you once again on the day three, the final day of this conference, and I look forward to your participation and very engaging discussions. Thank you so much. Thank you Dr. Dasgupta. This was a very succinct but very comprehensive introduction of the topic. It summarizes all of sort of where we are in terms of mangrove knowledge, mangrove research, mangrove sciences, and where we have to go, where we are intending to go. One thing that really resonates to me is what you said that we have to manage the man in the mangrove. And just to be gender neutral, I think we have to manage the human in the mangrove to make sure everyone is covered. That's where actually all the practical and challenges and opportunities lies, because these are intertwined the issue that you raised about transboundary flow of ecosystem services, the policies, the regulations. And that's why it becomes even more important that we have these kinds of discussions where these points are raised, and we try to make our path in a direct to make our progress in the direction where we will find some pathways towards better sustainable, you know, life for all communities everywhere. And with that, I think this is a very good beginning for our next presentation, which is our keynote address. And we are very privileged to have Professor Daniel Murdiaso from C for the class to have with us, who will be actually discussing about how mangrove science can inform and influence policy. But before I provide Professor Murdiaso's introduction, which I believe a lot of you already know it doesn't require much of introduction, but I just want to make one quick announcement a housekeeping announcement that's kept me. If you have any questions, all fits all for all participants audience members, if they have any questions for the presentation or anything our speakers is those people are saying, then kindly type that into an a box for any general comment any observation any other research, anything else that you want convey, please use the chat box. We will be looking at Q&A answer to respond, but your comments will be well preserved recorded in the chat box. So, with that, I move to Professor Daniel Murdiaso, who is a principal scientist at C for a crowd, and also a professor at department of geophysics and meteorology at it be university for board Indonesia. His research is related to land use change and biogeochemical cycles and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He has published extensively several peer reviewed articles book chapters. And one of the papers about mangrove science about mangrove being repositories of carbon has almost cited more than at least 10,000 times now. Professor Murdiaso has been involved in several IPCC assessment report, including the IPCC special report on land use land land use change and forestry. And in 20 in 2000, he served the government of Indonesia as deputy minister of environment for two years. And during that he was a national focal point of UNFCC and CPT. He's also a member of many national international committees, including Indonesian Academy of Sciences. So we are very honored and privileged to have you here Professor Murdiaso. We look forward to hear. Here you speak about how mangrove science can inform an influence policy over to you. Thank you for the introduction. Can you hear me. Yes, we can hear you and your slides up also. Great. Thank you. So as Rupesh described my life. I've been into a kind of word trying to mingle between science and policies. And that's what I'm going to share with you how we did it for mangrove in the past, well, 10 years or so. I'm trying to influence the decision making processes and how can mangrove or blue carbon science can be part of that. So let me begin by describing what I'm going to say in the next 20 minutes or so. Delivering science is something but more importantly is how can we walk over that through various processes, beginning from, you know, the science itself, how can we deliver credible science and find evidence. And at the same time, we also very privileged to have the opportunity to build the capacity of young people, students and also policy community, regarding the knowledge and information, even new information about mangrove. So we have to, you know, plan ahead intentionally how to make that kind of platform possible by having dialogue with science and policy. It's very crucial. And even if we are in a position of being passive, communicating science is very key how we do that in this kind of word with virtual platform and things like that is very important. So it's not just doing science itself but how to communicate and interact with them directly. That's that's what I am going to describe this morning and beginning by showing how and where we have been working. I think it's more than 20 countries now under the swarm program that we have that stand for sustainable wetland adaptation and mitigation program covering across the tropics, working on wetland and a bit of a mangrove. So that's that's how, and where we work so far and trying to gather those information I described earlier. Let me just give you some example where we work in Africa. This is in Mozambique trying to use remote sensing high resolution imagery to look at not only the carbon, but also the height of the trees colleagues from the US for a service and see for the US for a service is our partner working in Mozambique again at the same time we build the capacity of local university local government, etc. And this is to work in Gazi Bay in Kenya. It's mainly dealing or connecting mangrove science with policy at the local level. And in Vietnam, working a very extensive restoration area in the Mekong Delta and also the post war decredited mangrove in Vietnam. So all these things have been published and we managed to organize a special issues in conferences and that's the way we channel the information to the scientific community. And, of course, in India, led by Rupesh, even before he joins before formerly, we already started back in 2015. Oh my God, this long time ago. And here is the collection of things that we do across the globe. And also in sorry, the Western part of Africa and Latin America. So today, I want to share more intensively about our work in Indonesia, which mainly cover issues not only carbon, but also the sedimentation processes as we are working in the created mangrove and as well as in conserved for protected mangrove. We have been gathering so much information in these areas with different setting of mangrove across the archipelago. So the way we present the result is something like this, showing the carbon stock when it is degraded and how it will prevail in terms of recovery and you can see here. And this is the main message we try to convey that even if you degrade the above ground biomass the mangrove itself. Temporarily you still have a great deal of carbon in the soil. So, protecting that site location or entities is very crucial to put the vegetation back so that you have this source of carbon. And also legalizing the sites for protection or proper management of it. So we convey this message in very recent publication. In addition to that we also try to look at the other aspect of restoration or rehabilitation is the way mangrove help and facilitate the process of sedimentation trapping the sediment and at the same time also certain amount of carbon in it. So we cover both carbon and sediment, and this is very important information when we are talking about restoration program restoration activities and project and things like that. So, we, in the past been collecting all this information put it in a publication of formal journal and set run and I have just been informed by Kanye who is in the room that we have more than 150 peer review publication in a journal and dozens of papers and and shot the communication for different kind of community so it's, it's quite the prolific in the past 10 years or 150 more or less. So that's that's about 15 publication a year that's that's quite promising in terms of informing policy community. So, we also try very hard and intensively to translate that kind of information into more digestible information in a kind of infographic like this and we found it's very powerful to inform you know people in the streets and lay people about how important it is to protect and restore mangrove kind of server and that kind of situation. So, we do a lot of this kind of communication in terms of informing society at large about very difficult and rarely talk about this ecosystem which is time to be marginalized. So, when when I was at school, I was hated so much because there are so many mosquito and the muddy smelly etc so it's time now to turn the tide and informing that this is not the way we should think about mangrove. This is something that is very precious for generation to come for feeding the community for protecting the planet etc etc. So, doing this kind of information public relationship is very crucial if we are talking about mangrove very difficult topic and new in many communities. So, today we maintain our website very regularly. Even this event is already there, you can see in our website. If you want to know more about mangrove, please visit the website if you want to know more about mangrove in particular and our work in mangrove. And sounds like a commercial. We try also to work in the global community. So, we were invited by the UNFCCC to form a workshop and this is very crucial in that time because high Garbondeservoir was not covered in any agenda of the UNFCCC in the convention. The title of that workshop was intentionally made that clear that this issue is not covered. So, from that time on it is covered, it is getting known better and better. So, that's also the time when we influence the process of developing the Superman of the IPCC guideline for wetland where mangrove is in chapter four. And it has permanently appeared there and it is now being considered and adopted and used for many countries, including Indonesia where I've been working a lot in the NBC and the development of forest reference and mission level as well. And in the past, the IPCC guideline 2006 was used, but now one can use the full or a full aspect, especially by adopting the wetland chapter of this document. So that's what happened in Indonesia so NBC and FRL for red plus activities adopting this guideline so that it is separate out from the awful guideline. We also work with policy community in propagating the news about the importance of blue carbon coastal blue carbon, especially mangrove. And even like this and very high platform to inform the public policy making processes that we end up with producing this kind of document so that blue carbon is now mainstream in Indonesian policies, including the long term plan to adopt blue carbon science for NBC etc. And last but not least it's also important to inform the local community local government to use how the blue carbon can be part of that project and activities when we are working with people in the context of climate change mitigation, maintaining the carbon stop improving the degraded mangrove etc so that at the same time we also promote the adaptation aspect of mangrove by showing how important it is to have it. So when we related that to the local livelihood fish catch etc. And more importantly is even down to earth, making manual issues with human face, when we are talking about health and nutrition of the local community. We try to capture all this information, while informing the local government and local community and society at large. So, to conclude, it is important that wetland science including mangrove has to be promoted tirelessly because it is at least known compared with other issues like terrestrial force, but it is very very strategic to know about this ecosystem better in the near future. It is also encouraging that, as far as we know in Indonesia, the effort has been ripping now the fruits, and it's come to fruition when you see things are adopted for policy making processes. So, communication is not always with scientific community, we have to be able to translate the knowledge that we gained from this scientific method into the policy and community at large. So, be simple and informative about it. If you expect the information is going to be absorbed adopted and used in the public policy making processes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your wide breadth of experience knowledge, your involvement in various forums, national international and local levels and how this sort of you know tapestry of advancement in mangrove science involved all these interventions at all this level. I think one of the key message that you highlighted is the role of science to generate evidence, the data based on certain methods with the robust practices, and then that's just the first step. It doesn't stop there we need to translate that information that knowledge to the people who can most benefit in order to manage this ecosystem in a better way. So whether it has to be in terms of improving and changes in policy, or also how to make communities who are living in these areas, you know, get benefit with that so these connections these linkages are very important and we take that a message loud and clear that as scientists, our work doesn't stop by just publishing a paper. We need to make sure that that information goes to the people who are who can then make decisions, and then a real change can happen on the ground, both for the ecosystem, but also for the people who are, I would say, best positioned to to conserve these so we, since you finished well in time, I must thank you that you are setting a very good precedent for today's program, and I think all other speakers and resource people will keep that in mind and will stay in time and have a little more time for discussions, something which we didn't have last two days and today's session is basically that the message the essence will come out from all this discussion so this is a very good beginning I'm very pleased with that. There are a few questions if you do not mind answering them, I'm just filtering them, and I'll pose one couple to you, which is straightforward. One is from Ajit Kumar saying and he is interested in knowing how carbon estimation is made in the roots. You will like to respond. Yes, yes, I saw their Q&A if I don't have time in the slot that you've made, I will type them up later. But yes, the first question is very, very crucial, because oftentimes we neglect this in our report. And seeing mangrove vegetation, very charismatic one. But it is very important that this ecosystem has a very high net primary production, even if it is small, you know the turnover in terms of leaves, litter, and also dead fine root is very high. So this is the most productive ecosystem and all of them deposited in the soil and composed there so we can track down to, you know, very simple and relatively cheap method using the lab to tend to trace back how all these carbon arms or sediment back 200 years back, and we can not only date that but also estimate the biomass, the root biomass and decay and how they contribute to the soil organic carbon by putting all this, well, artificial, not artificial root but artificial back to collect all the root and then submerge it in the soil so that you can you can estimate the decomposition rate by weighing and looking at the decomposition processes. Unlike in the pitland situation where it is continuously submerged in the coastal zone you have tidal rains, so sometimes they are submerged, sometimes they are not. So this will give the opportunity for the microbes and and also the macro bent of macro fauna to digest this biomass so you can see how fast it is compared with the permanently submerged environment like inland pitland. So yes, you can measure it directly. But in the long term, measuring soil carbon that I cannot describe this today for you but you can you can visit our website and see the protocol how to measure and how to sample and measure those things that I would recommend you to do to visit that. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, indeed. This was a question that came up yesterday also. There is a lot of interest in standardizing the methods and what methods can be used for total ecosystem carbon stocks and in that all the above ground below ground compartments of carbon can be assessed. So, as Padanyal mentioned, please visit the website because it is not just for this protocol but there are other information other papers other publications there which might be of interest in use. So with that, I will move to our next speaker. But I encourage again participants to type their question into an a and our panel members and speakers will respond to them either by typing or answering them live. So, after our keynote address, we move to our first speaker of day three, who is Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran. Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran is also co as I use the term co-conspirator in organizing this this conference and bringing all of us together so he does need that mentioned here. He's also generously agreed to share some of the recent trends in mangrove research within Southeast Asia that that's what he will be covering. He is a DST inspired faculty at Wildlife Institute of India based in Dehradun. He is an ecologist focusing on vegetation recovery following natural and anthropogenic disturbances. That's his area of work. He holds a PhD in Portney from Bhartia University. And he is a recipient of Lebanese dad post doctoral fellowship in 2014, where he conducted research in Germany and also DST inspired faculty award in India in 2018. The research largely focuses on mangrove community responses to the sea level change associated with tectonic subsidence and uplifting Andaman and Nicobar Island. And I had distinct pleasure of being with him in the field. So I benefited from his extensive knowledge of Andaman Nicobar. And so I would also like to thank him for for lending that with that Dr. Nehru, floor is yours. Thank you Rupesh for generous introduction and one outcome. Good morning for all the people attending this webinar from across different states and different countries. And so let me share my screen. Looks good. Can you make it full screen please. Yes, yes. Good to go full screen. Yeah. Yes. So last two days we had a wonderful sessions and often some of the keynote speakers or some of the speakers have highlighted the knowledge gaps. And what I'm going to do in the next 15 minutes or so is not only just highlighting some of the knowledge gaps but also having a chance to you know look at the trends in how mangrove publications have evolved over the time just you know, number of publications in under different thematic areas or at different time periods how this, you know, the number of scientific publications in terms of mangrove ecosystems have progressed in the last five decades. And it is no rocket science that looking at the past provides great insights to go forward in the future and time and again it being proven in many scientific fields and mangrove is no exception. Many reviews, review works have in fact contributed a lot to the lot to taking mangrove science forward. For example, there are studies that are very specific to countries are global level studies, studies of various kinds, looking at land use land tour patterns across the globe or sea level rise, how it impacts global mangroves or the N number of such studies at regional as well as global scales, and not only these studies help us to understand how things have progressed in the past, but also these kind of review of extensive literature can also help us make a framework or a synthesis of ideas, and this framework in fact can provide a greater insight to go forward in the future. For example, the reason one that along with Dr. Farid, we also worked is putting mangrove sociological systems fitting them into the adaptive cycle framework. This was one of the first such attempts of, you know, making mangrove sociological systems into a well-known concepts like adaptive cycle. Such kind of attempts can have a often larger reach than just, you know, mangrove researches in the around the world, and also another regional study, specifically focused to Singapore where phrase at all in 2020 attempted to, you know, put scientific value to the different indicators and how this, you know, and they provided a qualitative framework for scientific value of different indicator within coastal ecosystem, different subject areas related to marine and coastal ecosystem, and mangrove is one among them. And however, in India if you look at, though there are so many review studies being done, though we came to know around 42 review studies and mangroves are available and available for Indian mangroves. But if you dig deeper into details, these studies are either local specific, like the welcome address speaker Rajasthri has mentioned. The reason paper on Bitar Kanika was though it is covering an extensive volume of information, it is a very regional specific. And like Professor Kathiri since work in Pichawara, this is like, though they provide a very good scientific information, very good basis to take research forward, they are very specific to a region. And in, otherwise, even if you have an India specific research, they are quite subject specific, for example, the first day speaker Raghun's or his paper is mostly looking at mangrove floor sticks in India. And likewise, there are, and how anthropogenic pollution can affect mangrove biodivers in India, there are review papers, likewise there are a number of other review papers looking at different aspects. So either these review papers are region specific or subject specific. Therefore, there is no, there is not much of attempt has been made to understand how in a different thematic areas, how, what are the available literature in terms of Indian mangroves. And so keeping that in mind, so this particular work, it's very recently we done actually, it's still an ongoing work. And these, we take inspiration from these two particular studies and we try to replicate more or less similar aspects of mentioned in these two studies. One is from Colombia, but they looked at the temporal trends, geographical coverage and research gaps over the, you know, complete, over the century in Colombia. Likewise, like I mentioned in the previous Daniel phrase, and his team had worked in Singapore, and what they did, they did a similar attempt, but then they went a step forward to provide a quantitative framework for scientific value for different key ecosystems related to marine. And, but for this particular talk, I will one restrict to temporal trends and geographical coverage and research gaps. But our overall goal is to take this research forward and make a framework exclusive for mangrove and under different thematic areas. And so the major objectives for this particular study is to understand the trends in mangrove research during the past five decades. It's a past five decades is just a random choice. We expect that looking at last five decades itself can provide a lot of information about how this trends have evolved over time. And also our another objective is to look at key areas of research focus in the past and recent trends in collaboration efforts, and also identifying major knowledge gaps and important research areas for future research. I will mostly talking with the first three objectives and touch upon the last objective which is kind of for the last two days also we've been hearing a lot about this. And we use Prisma protocol with preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis. And we use the mangrove specific keywords, number of mangrove specific keywords ranging from mangrove India or mangrove different states that has mangrove cover in India or different subjects like mangrove phytoplankton, mangrove vegetation ecology. So we use number of keywords to search for documents and we kept the time frame of 1971 to 2021. And lastly we use Google Scholar search engine for this particular work. And if you look at the advantage of using Google Scholar in such kind of review work, it has proven that it has Google Scholar as a higher capacity to retrieve information that are very local specific or information that are actually a great literature that does not have a published in a journal or something. So these two particular research one by three then Gustavo had established that we're around tenfold higher capacity of Google Scholar to retrieve scientific data, scientific literatures compared to other search engines like Scopers and Web of Science. So keeping in that mind and in Indian context there will be a lot of literature that could be still lying as a great literature. So in that case we use Google Scholar for this work. And we have also looked at South Ganga that's a reservoir of Indian PhD thesis. It's a database where you can get to know about all the PhD thesis in the Indian universities. So we also use this search engines to get more information. Also we screened through the bibliography section of most of the downloaded articles, downloaded literatures to gather more information. And we have screened almost more than 2000 literatures for their eligibility to be considered in this work. And we screened through the abstract to understand whether to understand its relevance to the mangrove research. So at the end we narrowed down to around 1165 articles or publications related to Indian mangroves. And if you look at the cumulative number of publication over the years there is a striking increase in the recent decades. In the last two decades there was a great number of publications being published especially in international publications. But if you look at the categories of publication research articles are dominated and there are eight different categories of articles, book chapters, conference and international proceedings and national conferences or PhD thesis with technical reports. And there are some eight, the entire literates have been categorized as nine different categories. And if you look at the geographical coverage of these studies, most Sundarbans had the highest number of publications followed by Odisha which had Mahanadi Delta as well as Bitar Kanika and Tamil Nadu another one of the key player to the mangrove literature, especially Pichawaram had the highest number of mangrove publications followed by other places like Andhra Manikovar Islands and Gulf of Kachin Gujarat. And if you look at the average number of publication per year how it has grown for each of the decades, until 2020 there was a modest increase. But if you see afterwards from 2001 to 2010 if you look closer, until 2001 to 2004 there was not much of an increase but just after 2005 there is a sudden increase in number of publications and afterwards the trend has continued. And if you look at the mangrove publication at East Coast, West Coast as to the islands concern, East Coast had always had the highest number of publications and followed by West Coast and then Andhra Manikovar Islands. Though Andhra Manikovar Islands has one among the richest mangrove biodiversity area in the country still in terms of scientific publication is still quite lagging behind. So this trend, if you look at the trend again like you see in the previous slide, after 2000 there is a stark increase. And the number of publications in East Coast, West Coast and islands are also very comparable to the mangrove area these regions has. And if you look closer in this spike, so this is also like after 2004 you have a greater spike in number of publications and we suspect that the after tsunami and number of cyclones in this particular time period had provided more awareness about the importance of mangrove that had led to a sudden increase in number of publications in mangrove. For example, for example when we compared these two keywords within the titles of the publications that we come across until 2004 hardly one publication had this word cyclone in the title. Whereas after 2005 to 2021, there were 27 publications which had these two, one of these two keywords in their titles. And thematic area wise vegetation ecology had the most number of publications this particular thematic area only concern to this 70 odd mangrove species and in India it's only around 45 mangrove species and just firms. It's almost like one third of all the publications are concerning to the vegetation ecology aspect. While fauna though it has a wide variety of it includes wide variety of organisms ranging from single cell organisms to mammals. And had though it has a high second highest number of publication but comparatively with the given the diversity of groups involved in it, it may be much, much lesser. And other groups like bacteria fungi plankton's diatoms. So all this put together they had a much lesser representation as well. And though India has a number of restoration projects across India there are very few literature that talks about these restoration aspects. Though the recent times there was some evolution, I mean, a qualitative evaluation of these restoration projects attempted in Gulf of Kutch, but such attempts are not being carried out in many other parts in the country. And carbon estimation carbon stock was also very recently we had a good number of publication coming up on carbon stock estimation within India. And mostly from the East Coast, whereas in the West Coast, such attempts are still need to step up. And we took citations as an indicator of how much these publications are recognized around 50% of the publications had less than one less than 10 citations and only hardly 12% of the publications had more than 100 citations. And how often do we collaborate? That's again a one thing we have to look at and almost more than almost 60% of the publications where single institutional publications where not much of there is no collaboration between the institutions happen. And around 40% of the publications have collaborate collaborations more than one in the two institutions coming together. And again, we see a spike in number of collaborative publications after 2010. And if you dig deeper into detail, number of foreign collaborations in the publications, we don't have much. In fact, around 14% of these publications have foreign collaborating authors. And the last decades more or less it had remained same in the last decade. So there's not much of an increase while institutions within India collaborating to bring up publications have increased just before the last decade. But in the last five, six years, it's more or less remained relatively lesser than the previous five years. And the major players in terms of collaborative research with Indian organizations is USA more than around 50 publications from US and other developing developed nations from the western countries like Germany, France, and Belgium, UK. And they had also played a major role in this collaborative research and within Asia, we have some publications from Japan, some major publications from Japan. And if you look at the area of mangroves for each of the states within India, though it may not indicate that they bigger the area than larger the number of publication but also some of the states, though it had relatively less mangrove cover. For example, Kerala Tamil Nadu, they have more number of publications compared to the mangrove area. So it mostly indicates that the local specific institutions are the key players in taking mangrove research forward. And many of these, as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, it is Annamalai University which had most number of publications on mangroves. And likewise in Kerala, Kachin University with its marine department had more number of contribution to mangrove literature. So these local specific institutions have contributed more to the mangrove research. And in terms of major research gap like I highlighted in the slide, funnel groups are least studied like it has been emphasized for the last two days as well. We had very less number of studies in terms of funnel groups. And despite number of great volume of vegetation ecology related studies, there is no maternal studies as so far attempted to understand, you know, the either the East Coast specific study or West Coast. So there is no study so far attempted to understand a larger perspective. And also, though recent times, some focus is given for long term monitoring studies. Till as far as mangrove research is concerned, it is still way behind terrestrial ecosystems. There even the recent time there is a push for long term ecological monitoring research in the country. And most of these are concerned to the terrestrial ecosystems, whereas mangroves are still in terms in these terms are slightly neglected. So I, and I acknowledge my collaborators, student collaborators Anu Praj Singh and Brahmada Sharon for their contribution to this study. This is ongoing study. And I also acknowledge the funding agencies, DSC inspired program, as well as referred small grant program for funding our group. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. For providing the detailed analysis of publications coming out from on Indian mangroves. This is actually very insightful because it tells that the good news is that the publications number is increasing and increasing fast in recent times. Just goes to show that people, researchers are more inclined to study these areas, there is more funding available, there are more institutional support available. But at the same time, I think your presentation show that large, large gaps still exist in terms of collaborations in terms of partnerships and meaningful advancement of science. As far as I believe, can come when a great minds can come together, a lot of people can collaborate, a lot of institutions come can come together. And this actually goes to show how countries where no mangroves exist as you highlighted in Germany, France. They have been collaborating and part of a publication so that goes it's only possible with the collaboration so looking, you know, focusing even just on one country in India I think this, this highlights the need that researchers across India, and we have many as this conference shows as the discussion we have had in the last three days shows have a good amount of researchers focusing a lot of their scientific inquiry in these ecosystems, and they can come together to have a little more holistic understanding of the seascape, a lot more understanding of the continuity of these coastal ecosystems. And, and more precisely so because the challenge in front of us is immense climate change is important mangroves provide a great nature based solutions, and very important, not just for mitigation but for adaptation for the sustainable livelihoods of the communities living there. So, I think this provides a snapshot or gives us a lens to look through where our energy should be spent so thank you so much for sharing that. I believe there will be a lot more questions and people might reach out to you in terms of more informations on the publications that you have found and used in your presentation. I think we are right on time. And in terms of cushion and a box. I do not see any specific question related to your presentation. These are general questions about different topics which we will pick up in our larger panel discussion in the second half. And I encourage other panel members if there are shorter questions which can be responded by typing. So please go ahead and do that. So moving to our next part, which is coming up on a break. But before the break, I have two things. One is a group photo. This is our third day with a different set of speakers and resource people. So we will break for a photo before the break will take a group photo. But before taking group photo I would like to also make a small announcement about a post workshop survey evaluation survey. And this is very important for us to gauge how successful this workshop has been how informative this workshop has been and how well we covered the topics that are important and very interesting. So there will be a link for workshop survey which will be posted after the panel discussion in the chat box visible to all participants kindly click on that link and complete this online survey. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes and it provides a very valuable important information to us. What we did good, where there is still some room for improvement and if we plan for such event in future, what best we should try to capture. So that will be very important. Now I'll request veto to take over from me and do your magic, bringing all of us in one panel. I'll request all of our resource members and speakers to turn on their video briefly so we took and take the picture. And after the picture we will take a short break. Yes, thank you Dr. Press, please turn on your camera. Okay, for those who already attend this from the first day, you know the drill right. So okay we have. Okay, more camera to come, Professor Siva Kumar. If you please turn on your camera so we can gather everybody in the same frame, taking a good picture and have your wider smile. In three, one, two, three. One more time. Okay. One more time. Okay, smile again one, two, three. All right, thank you. That's all back to you, Professor. Thank you, Vito. Thank you all. So this is about 1040. And our next talk will start very shortly, but I'll take maybe five minutes break so people can have a cup of coffee or a drink and we'll resume in 1045 India time. So in five minutes. Thank you. See you soon. Okay, so we are back after our short break. I thank you again everyone who is present in the room. Thank you for making time and thank all the speakers. Welcome address and keynote speakers as well as an arrow for his talk to get up, get us off on a good start. We begin with the work next talk of today. This is on mangrove research in Southeast Asia, Malaysia, some insight for the way forward. So the idea is that after listening to Nehru about India, we broaden a bit of our focus and hear from our next speaker, Dr. Bihara Satya Narayana from his perspective and his research from Malaysia and in Southeast Asia. Let me introduce Dr Satya Narayana, who is currently working as associate professor at the Institute of Oceanography and Environment University, Malaysia, He started his research career as a mangrove biologist in India in Andhra University and continued studying these wetlands in other Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, China, Malaysia, as well as in African countries like Cameroon and the Gambia. His research interests include mangrove ecology, vegetation dynamics, habitat restoration, conservation management, including remote sensing and GIS applications. He's a member of IUCN mangrove specialist group since 2019 and actively engaged in both mangrove flora and fauna, particularly horseshoe crabs. He has worked collaboratively with a lot of other researchers around the world, and he has published several research papers, more than 85. He has received several international scientific awards and cognitions and about 12 research grants throughout his illustrious career. We are happy to have you here, sir. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Dr Rupesh. I hope my screen is clear now. The screen is clear, but can you make it a full screen? Is it fine? Yes, now it's good. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. And first of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the organizers of this conference, my good friend Dr Nehru. Very good introduction by Dr Rupesh. Thank you, sir. This conference is a place to learn from each other. I would say, of course, though we have been continuing research for a long time, you know, mangrove is a natural laboratory. So we keep on learning every day from each other and from the ecosystem itself. Once again, I'm delighted today to join this event together with my professors, colleagues, and like Professor Farid, Professor Taperich and Professor Ponyaslok. And yes, Professor Daniel and MacKenzie, Professor MacKenzie. So it was so nice. It is like another MMM conference somewhere. So it is very good. Thank you so much. Yes, coming to my talk today I was requested to say a few words about research in Southeast Asia, in particular from Malaysia, where I am now working together with some insights for the way forward. Indeed, from the last two days until this morning, we have been listening to imminent personalities with the lightening talks. They have been concentrating and they have been really revealing the facts that the mangroves, the importance of mangroves for the carbon carrying capacity and also carbon credits and the natural based solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change and support. Definitely, the research, the current research in Southeast Asia is not really, is entirely different from what has been, you know, talking from last two days. So I don't really need to repeat that one. I try to show you some other concepts which I felt like sharing with you, especially in the case of India, because my insights, they are not going to be presented as a separate section. The second parcel of my talk, targeted to the Indian researchers, so that we can have a very good collaboration as, as, as Dr. Nehru indicated that collaborations are low, it is a good opportunity. Kindly note that present any of the research findings that I'm doing from Malaysia is part of my teamwork, carried out between Malaysia, Belgium, Australia, UK. So I'm happy for Safari, my brother is on board today and we try our best to deliver this talk and answer your questions and see how best we can cooperate in the future for the mangrove research for sustainable and conservation. So, thank you. I am also thankful to some of my students who work and I don't have this to write so much. So many names, but I'm going to say a few words about what I felt like sharing. Yes, you all must have seen that FAO has already, you know, evaluated the 30 years of data for the global forest data, and also they present the actual mangrove extent, global mangrove extent by 2020 was like 14.8 million hectares. So, it is a very good to me at the is the most recent estimate global level estimate that one could give her, and it is it is nice to see always the Asia is the bold and spot for our mangrove. And, you know, you know, existence, followed Africa and America's and the ocean. The FAO also give, give some details at the level changes between 1990 and 2020, and they were, you know, they have come up with the detail changes on the trend of change for each region and sub region. And, unfortunately, between in the in the in the last 30 years we lost almost 1 million mangroves, mangroves, it is very sad part of it, but it is true. Their estimates are reliable. When I see 2000 estimates, they were almost close to the, you know, more at loss of mangroves estimate so it is it is reliable estimate which we can depend on. Yes, overall, the trend of decrease global loss mangrove loss is decreasing, but not the case for Asia, though it is it is very sad to see the same kind of figures. You know, for Asia, it is very sad to see this, you know, 39 38,000 six across loss in the indicator level and it's very sad. As you can understand, you know, most of the publications and as we can witness I witness the human anthropogenic interventions for this kind of decrease. But what my gut feeling is saying that there is something to be done extra more than looking at the human level interventions. So that is nothing but mangroves lost due to the coastal erosion. Somehow I feel, I still feel that mangrove lost to the coastal erosion is undervalued to me. That is the point that we really have to catch hold off. It is time to catch hold off and see, see what would be done to mitigate this kind of effect. So I'm particularly focusing this point, because I wanted to just show an area bring a wildlife sank in which you are familiar and it was in the limelight from the last two days. It is on the east coast of India. So, in some pockets, I'm surprised to see between 90s and 20, 800 to 900 meters patch of mangroves was lost into the sea. That is, it is really remarkable amount of mangroves that were lost. We have very good quantities of technology like satellite images. So we really have to make use of it and that part must be highlighted somewhere. I know when if you if you examine area wise statistics for putting up, you may not be able to see most of change because the forestry department and the local NGOs like MS Swaminath have been carrying out extensive plantation works. So in the barren areas. So probably this loss is a bit compensated. Forest is decreasing from the eastern side. So that means in the places like India where there is no opportunity for the mangroves to grow land water not going to extend land water markets. Definitely they're going to have a hostile squeeze, which could result for not only for the loss of mangrove extent, but also the biodiversity loss. So these points, somehow we, I felt like definitely because I was my PhD degree was from putting a mangrove and definitely many people of you, many of you must be working in the same area. So just to try to focus and try to see what would be done in really in such cases, not only in putting I think there are so many places we must be losing the extent to mangrove cover like this because of the coastal erosion. Okay, and you all have seen the intergovernmental climate change predictions of sea level raise by year 2100. So you have, you must have seen that the east coast of India is having a height of 0.5 to 2 feet height by 2100 year. It is a bit less than the west coast. But still, I, to me, we, we don't have to wait to 100 because then when you see the situation what is going on right now, just five days back, what happened when we talk about on each road, just five days back. I'm sad and to see the case where I paid one year ago with my children. So see how the sea water intruded into that place. So they have linked this, this, this is seawater inclusion of 200 to 300 meters and word to David cycle and David. This area is already susceptible to such kind of climatic change. So we are we are already on the danger zone actually. On this seawater edge, I don't think the sky touching apartments are not very far I think within 200 to 150 meters. It is almost close to the road, which road where people goes for evening walk, morning walk. So that's such kind so we are already in the danger zone. But as you know, you cannot be mangrove mangroves or management alone because mangroves have specific don't stop for their prevalence and survival. But we have projector recently. We have to take most care when we are disturbing not only mangroves but also the other natural or planted vegetation or sand dunes. So any part of our anthropogenic activities in relation to the coastal features, we must be very careful, extra careful. These are the potential barriers to the impact of social services. So this point, everyone has to make note of it to see before we any kind of change in the coastal areas, we really have to go further. You know, the critical critical analysis to bring up any kind of change in the course. As you know that conference 26, most recently, last month, the global leaders have already promised to bring down the deforestation by 2030 is a very good motive. And our Honorable Prime Minister close to it to net zero emissions by 2017. Yeah, we as scientists, I strongly believe that our, our, our impression scientific insights should be related to the policy makers and politicians or managers to protect these coastal features of vegetation, including the mangrove station to really come back with this, you know, this climate change and so forth. And as our keynote at this, that's good, that's good as you know, indicated, it is not only the mangrove, it's not only the loss of mangroves. Actually, mangroves are connected to almost all directly or indirectly to every part of the sustainable development goal. So it is, it is our customary to really take care of the mangroves to the extent possible. Yes, we noticed from a few estimates also. Now, the global rate is alarming. That's why I'm not alarming. And that much is though that's why they say, we can go for conservation optimism, but in the case of Asian, especially South Asian Southeast Asia. So it will be really time to think about this concerns and what still we need to see how it could be balanced the loss of the mangroves or are there any, is there any adaptation grounds that we can still find for the mangrove colonization and so forth. It is our responsibility as scientists, we have to help the government to take such initiatives. And one of the very good publication recently come out from the mangrove specialist group of IUCN, led by Professor Farid, and I am also happy to mention that Professor Farid and myself have been working in mangrove for the last 25 years. And we worked in Burisma, we moved to Malaysia, China, we are still continuing, this is the great partnership work we are going on. And he has a very good point, public perceptions really matters for the conservation. Also, some of our, you know, these people that they have delivered the perceptions with, maybe the perception is very small, but it can make a big impact on the conservation management. For example, I would say, yeah, mangroves are smelly grounds, or some people do mangroves as a musketeer grounds, but as we scientists, we have to explain the reason behind it, what would be the reason that is making mangroves to get such kind of again. For example, I would explain to you to have a very good explanation for the mangroves are not really the breeding sites of sites for musketeers, which really harmful for the human. You know, in this context, I want to highlight the plastic, which you are deliberately just leaving it to the upstream and the waters and they are reaching to the downstream, and they're catching, caught by the mangroves. So mangroves not only catching the sediment but also catching plastic companies, like even plastic cans, bottles, and the discarded fishing nets and so forth. So what happens, ultimately, those plastic containers, which receive the rainwater fresh water will be helping some musketeers which they breed in the fresh water, not in the brackish water, like it is albicans, which is responsible for the spread of dinghy, chicken, guinea, and chica virus. So this kind of the species, they need fresh water, but what we are doing, we are creating such environment for them to breed in the vines. So that is how we can scientifically, you know, explain to the local community, local people to create some sort of awareness, not to have any bad impressions on the mangrove, and the mangroves indeed, they are really helping us and saving us. So I definitely can bring a change to the conservation of the mangrove ecosystems. So we really have to, as many of you highlighted, community is a very strong role. I'm happy to see sometimes even the couch, even television or refrigerator in the mangroves, so probably the mangrove scientists don't need to go for a furniture shop, I think they can go to the mangroves to try that, but they do just collect furniture, home furniture. It's very sad, but people are doing it, still doing it some part. This part, I will explain, I will link up this photograph after some other part of my talk, but one point I can say, don't think that my students will work in the mangroves without shirts. Sorry, it was a raining time, so that's why it was wet, you know, so they removed shirts and they're continuing the work. So I talked about this slide, the story behind this slide after some time. So overall, most recently there was one more review on the identification of hotspots, mangrove deforestation hotspots in South Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia Pacific. So it is, they have categorized the hotspots into primary hotspots and secondary hotspots. So Myanmar and Phillips have a huge loss of mangroves, that's why they were considered under primary, whereas Malaysia, I'm sad to see my country still, of course. So Cambodia and Indonesia are still in secondary hotspots. So overall, they said that the expansion of the agricultural activities and the oil plantations are becoming great for the mangrove in most of these countries, which we can, yeah, it is true indeed. And this also I would like to say that yeah, you know, mangroves are social ecological systems, that means physical components, biological components and social elements are fit together to influence each other. That means the mangroves are the place that open, it's a natural laboratory that opens doors for a wide array of research. So we can go right from a simple topic to the most complicated topic like the industries and carbon estimations and so forth. So there is no limit, it is, it is, you are the only limitation for the mangroves to conduct research. So then it is good that we can go on with the simple research on mangrove species, composition distribution to, you know, exploitation and socio-economics, species environment relationships and mangrove population and conservation and management, and including marine endangered species like dolphins in the mangroves. So many places like in Telkale or in Sundarban, the dolphins coming in these ones. So same here goes in Malaysia as well. So out of these topics today I was requested to offer some sort of a remote sensing based observations to share with you. So in this part I am going to share some findings based on the drone based research. As everyone knows drone is a bit, is a revolutionary approach in order to really analyze the mangrove species composition distribution or coming up with land cover land use mapping. So my theme I'm going to share with you today about remote sensing which is unmanned aerial vehicles and many people are known as drones and some people also started calling them as unoccupied aerial vehicles. So, I mean, along with that I'm going to share some more points just to increase the students or stakeholders for which they don't really need to spend a lot of time. They can easily record the data which they are collecting the field and that could be used for sharing and later on useful for their networking national and international. Okay, as you know, in the aerial photography it is much more advantage aerial images, much more advantageous than satellite data because aerial photographs we can avoid cloud cover because you can adjust the time of execution of the satellite aerial images. So that is a good advantage. You can do it by flying the helicopters or you can fly the drone the same. So also the resolution, you can really go for the submeter to meters or centimeter levels, you can be just by looking at altitude. So that that's a wonderful option we have. So that's that's why people started using it and it's become widely popular for the mangrove. When you look at there are several drone types based on the size range platforms and abilities. So you can find the drones from very small to very large. And also the range of flight you can fly you need to fly them close or you need to fly them, you know mid range or short range and so forth. And also aerial platforms you have many rotors or fixed wing or single rotor to balance the, you know, the flight of the drone and also the ability for what are you going to use the drones. For the deliveries, you know, nowadays, it's delivered through the through the drones. So then delivery drones and RTA drones and RDF drones and so forth. There are so many drones that are available that you are the one person to choose what kind of drone you need and what is the object of your study but what finally makes you to decide what kind of drone you need for your research. In the in the market, there are so many companies are available. And DJI is one of the best companies which you can trust upon and currently have the drone of a professional supported by, you know, from Belgium with Farid. And then we have been using it in the mangrove for identification of, you know, mapping or extraction of different bio physical properties. Yeah, this is, this is a drone's view of a mangrove stand, how clear it is you can see, especially as you know, we all mangrove scientists are struck by the sediment exposure during the low tide. So in that case, in some places we can dare to walk in but some places it is very difficult to walk in, it goes more than this inside. So it is very difficult. So then you can immediately take the drone to fly over that particular patch to know the real time monitoring to see what is there, along with the different speeches compositions or different legal activities if there are any logging activities are going on currently, but your real time monitoring is the best advantage you can you can make yourself. Like satellite data, yeah, drone images, you can see the quality, pictures, structure, shape, size, shape, certain characteristics that you can be used for identification of different species and classification of the image. That means it is almost very good characteristics that close to the satellite data so that that's a wonderful advantage for us. This is just RGB camera. I would say this is just audio became like your mobile phone. So, so, but the details are so clear and the abilities are more advanced for us. So for this particular presentation, I'm going to show you a short presentation and in short analysis from an area called city of Atlantis in Malaysia, it is located on the east coast of Penang, Malaysia, which is about one hour away from my campus. So, study was applied in the place where it is a rich diversity of nine row speeches may six to 10 speeches week are located at that particular batch. So we have that and the government has declared particular area is a state. The object to offer research was something like to the potential of the drone quality against the satellite data in terms of quality efficiency and accuracy quality in terms of spatial spectral radiometric and temporal resolution efficiency in the terms of coverage area data acquisition processing time and user cost and accuracy how finally we can arrive to the land use land classification. So this is the interesting one one image with the satellite and everyone is drawn taken and see how results we have achieved. For this presentation, I'm not going to show the entire the plan and just going to show the results that we acquired from just 12 vectors of the macro area where there is a rich diversity of speeches come. So, of course, although you use satellite data, either it is a special satellite data or aerial satellite data, definitely you need to have some ground in monthly ground in because you have a very good spatial coverage of satellite data. So, however, we have covered the extensive ground working and we've flown the drone at 100 meters altitude, the flying speed of four meters per second, and photographs taking intervals for every two seconds with 75 overlapping nature, and we have used some free software like a big, big QDS and also it is software for the analysis. So, I'm going to share some findings in terms of spatial resolution. When you have a pan sharp and the pleados image, it has a resolution of 50 centimeters, but the drone with the camera, we have a 2.8 centimeters resolution so it is very excellent excellent resolution for you to really point the features on the land. And spectral resolution, yes, satellite data have an advantage in the sense that you can have different and information blue, green, red, infrared and information, but it is not really possible with the RGB camera but in the drones you can have multi spectral data that cost you more. That depends on that's why I said there are so many models of the drones which you can select based on your interest and your objective of your study and also your financial effort, how much you can pay for a drone, that matters, but drone you can buy. So, then radiometric resolution actually causes very little impact on mangroves because most of the radiometric, higher the radiometric director, more the advantage for the objects which you are mapping a bit close in the shadow areas, so mangroves are lucky we can still make use of the 8-bit data which is good enough. And temporal resolution, yes, pleados, the France satellite, yes, it can revisit, same place, dialy between 24 hours, but you can also use drones every day, it's like 24 hours, but make sure that your drone is now, if your drone is water resistant, it's fine, if not you have to stop. And cost, it is something interesting that we analyzed how much we paid for it and then, you know, out of the two field works, two weeks field work, how much area we got, almost like 1.81 square kilometers of the area area, so when we come to that cost, sorry. Dr. Beher? Yes, sir. Anything? Yeah. No, I was just saying that do you have a lot more slides to cover? I finished running out of time? Yes, yes, actually, yes, 11.15 already. Oh my God. Five minutes over. Oh my God, oh my God, sorry, sir, sorry. No, no, no. When I wanted to say something really, I forget myself indeed, that's why. No, no worries, it's just fascinating. No, I'm really sad for it. Can you give me another two, three minutes please? Yes, yes, please wrap it up in a minute or so. Thanks. Yeah, actually this, when we look at the cost of the drone images, yeah, it is expensive than the satellite data, but you need to use the drones for a long time. So at least 500 times if you can fly, the cost of the image acquisition could go low. Anyway, drone images have a bigger file size, that's where processing time is more, but you can go for the segmentation process to come down. And yeah, you can observe dominant and non-pominent classes for which you can use it for object-based and pixel-based classifications. They are really giving a very good result for the mangroves. And as I said, biophysical properties which you can observe like pre-hide and canopy height model, even for most of the area without doing any ground analysis. So, but ground analysis in some part of our pockets will be useful for you to compare the density. So what we found is, in the case of the area which I examined, the managed forest has very close values of the drone canopy height models when compared to the non-managed forest probably because of heterogeneity in the forest. Also you are able to obtain the biomass estimates. Overall, as I said, the drone is a one-time investment over the use of long-term. It can give you very good results. But in the case of India, we really have to think of regulations which are released in 2021. So anyway, I just wanted to go for the mobile apps. Right from the identification of the speeches, there are several mobile apps available for the students to download. And also nowadays, there is an S track which you can upload live data. I mean, I'm real-time data and you can submit it through the online platform, which can be shared among the research investigators nationally, internationally interested. It is not open to everybody. So only the password, there will be a password, you can use it for the restrictions. And we have this kind of capacity building training to Malaysia, so we can do that exercise as well. So make sure that management always have stakeholders inside. In respect of the age, you can make a lot of change. So there is also one more software, GLAMA, which you can use it for the app-light analysis, which is very, very much important for you to see the nutrient dynamics and regeneration capacity. And also the tide, the three heights, you can use a global map. And make sure that you are always keeping praising equal tourism, field schools and ecutourism to promote the mango studies. Involve students, most importantly, involve the students for the plantations for it. So community management is going to rock. And also we have so many celebrities in India, definitely we have to make them ambassadors to benefit the mango conservations. So let us join hands to protect the mango treasure to improve national and international research collaborations. Thank you very much. I'm sorry for extending my time. I'm really sorry. Thank you, Dr. Bahra. And thank you for ending at such an inspiring note. It's a shame your last part of presentation was really worth inspiring and interesting and we couldn't have a longer time. But I'm happy to announce that your presentation will be at the website. And so people who are interested to know more about mangroves and these mobile apps that you shared can know more from your presentation and hopefully will include them in advancing their. So thank you so much for sharing all this new advancement. Thank you very, very, very, very. My sincere apologies. No, no worries. You took us for a longer drive and we enjoyed it just the time is not with us. So without further ado, let us move to our next session. That is a panel discussion. We have three experienced researchers, scientists in their own might to share their perspectives to share their views on mangrove research and also take us to, to some new territories the topics that we have not discussed, like what I just discussed about drones and mobile apps. We have researchers who will also shed light on some other unexplored relatively unexplored or limited explored areas of mangrove research. So we have a little bit tweaking in that program. I'll first call our panel member Dr. Richard McKenzie, then I'll call Professor pencil of Paduri whom you heard yesterday also. And then lastly, I'll call Dr. Shilpa Pandey. We'll have a brief presentations or a small talk by them. And then we will open up the discussion. And this is very crucial. It's the last day this is gives us time for discuss some of the ideas new things. So I'll really request all the speakers to keep their initial comments brief, and then we'll open up for more conversations more Christian and answer and more discussion. So, without further ado, let me invite Dr. Rich McKenzie. In terms of his introduction, he is a word for us for a service at Institute of Pacific Island for a street in Hilo, Hawaii, as well as international program office of United States for a service in Washington DC. So I must also thank him for keeping awake at this late hour and being with us in life. Thank you so much, Dr. Rich. He has published several papers, research articles, and since 2003 he's been working with USFS. And also, as a part of USFS international programs, he helps oversee the sustainable wetland adaptation mitigation program the swamp program that Professor Daniel Modiasso gave a little introduction. Rich is an important team member in that part. And last but not least rich loves Indian cuisine and he loves Indian mangrove. So with that rich over to you. Thanks for passion. Thanks for inviting me to present. It's an honor to be here. So good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm going to see if I can get this to work. Can you see my my screen? Yes. Great. Please go ahead. Okay, so yeah, so this is work that has come resulted from the swamp project that Park Daniel mentioned earlier. It's a collaboration between the Forest Service, C for and USA ID. I'm going to talk today about the value of establishing permanent mangrove plots and how data from these plots is advanced our understanding in mangrove forests. And I have to thank Dr. Nehru for his presentation because he led perfectly into my presentation on the lack of monitoring data for India. And so I'm going to talk about the value of long term monitoring and why are we interested in setting up permanent plots? Why do we need them? So first, as you are all probably aware of mangrove forests can store more carbon than most other forest ecosystems. So using a standard protocol such as swamp, the swamp protocol, which adheres to the UNFCCC protocol and that it's transparent, accurate, complete, comparable and consistent, which we also refer to as an attack principle. So using the swamp protocol, you can use permanent plots to track how carbon stocks change with time by remeasuring trees, by remeasuring annual inputs of leaf litter, by measuring below ground root growth, or by measuring below ground root decomposition. Because our protocol follows the attack principles, we can compare measurements across plots or across country or region. So for example, in this example here, remeasurments of permanent plots on the Pacific Island reveal that not all mangroves are equal. And so on the y-axis, we've got our above ground carbon accumulation, and the x-axis are our sites. And you can see that there is some variability in the rate at which carbon is being sequestered in these forests. This is valuable information when you are setting up a greenhouse gas inventory or a forest inventory. And this measurement is also referred to as the growth rate or also the stock change approach. And these numbers are valuable because they can be used for higher tier estimates and national reports, in that they increase the accuracy, the precision and the confidence in the data. And Poc Daniel also referred to the 2013 wetland supplement. And information like this can be used by the government in India or by other governments to increase the confidence in the tier of the data that they're reporting, as well as when they use this wetland supplement. Now tree growth rates, when you add leaf litter fall to it, gives you what we call net primary productivity or NPP. And when you combine this with net ecosystem respiration rates, you can calculate net ecosystem productivity. And this is the amount of carbon that the forest is gaining or losing. And in these photos here, Dr. Sahadev Sharma, a good colleague of mine, is setting up respiration chambers in a mangrove and in the forested mangrove that's now abandoned shrimp pond. And he's measuring, and these chambers are attached to, so you can see the chambers here, I don't know if you can see my mouse. They are attached to a greenhouse gas analyzer that allows us to continually measure carbon dioxide and methane and allows us to estimate net ecosystem respiration. Of course, a better way to measure respiration would be through the use of an eddy covariance flux tower. As you can see in these pictures here, and I believe this is a flux tower from India. And these should be considered if you are establishing permanent plots because they give you a better estimate of respiration and of greenhouse gas flux from the forest because they're located above the canopy and they include the entire ecosystem. So here's an example for some data we collected from some permanent forest plots. And so in this example, if we only looked at carbon stocks, you would see that intact mangroves store about 60 megagrams of carbon dioxide per hectare per year, which is two to three times more carbon than that is stored in deforested mangroves or in restored mangroves. When we calculate net ecosystem productivity, however, we see a different story. So now this intact mangrove, when we include this respiration, we see that the net ecosystem productivity is 10.6 megagrams of carbon per hectare per year, while the deforested mangrove is a source of carbon releasing 18.3 megagrams of carbon per hectare per year. And the restored sites are sequestering 12.7 megagrams of carbon per hectare per year. So this restored site, this younger site is sequestering more carbon than this older intact forest. And this is important again from a management perspective and a conservation perspective as we move forward to protect and restore these incredibly valuable ecosystems. Now the second benefit, the second reason why it's important to establish permanent monitoring plots is sea level rise. We know that sea level is rising and it has been identified as the greatest future threat to mangroves. But fortunately, we also know that mangroves are incredibly dynamic ecosystems and they've survived extreme fluctuations in sea level rise over the last 65 million years. How have they done this? Primarily through the ability of mangrove forests to increase the height of their forest floor relative to sea level. And this is accomplished by two main processes, accretion and root growth. Now accretion happens when sediment is deposited on the mangrove forest floor. So when the ocean floods the mangrove, when the tides come into the mangrove forest, when an adjacent river floods the mangrove forest, that water flows through the across the surface of the mangrove. And when it hits those root systems, those above ground roots, the water slowed in such a way that sediment is deposited out onto the surface. Of course, root growth is just the massive amounts of fine roots that mangroves will grow. And this is because mangroves grow in anaerobic waterlock sediments. In order to survive those conditions, they have to continually replace fine root systems. And so we have a really high below ground productivity level in these mangrove forests. Now as the sediment is layering onto the top of the mangrove forest and as the roots are growing, we see an increase in soil volume. So soil volume expands and it allows the forest floor to rise. Of course, subsidence and compaction are two processes that can counter soil volume accumulation in such a way that in some instances the mangroves actually will sink or subside. So as I said, permanent plots can help us track how mangroves are responding to sea level rise. Well, how do we track that? Well, we monitor how the surface elevation of the mangrove is changing relative to sea level rise. And we are doing this using three main tools. And I'm going to show you this example here. This is the island of Pompeii in the western Pacific. And this is part of our Pac-Man project, which is the Pacific Island mangrove monitoring network. And so the first tool that we use is lead 210. This is a naturally occurring radionuclide that is continually being deposited out of the atmosphere onto the earth's surface. And we go into the mangroves, we collect a core here, as you can see Maybelline on the right, and we section that core into continuous intervals. And those intervals are then returned back to the lab, and we extract the lead 210 from the sediment using a hot acid digestion. And then we measure how much lead 210 are in those intervals using alpha spectrometry. And then simply using the law of radioactive decay, we can determine, first of all, we determine the level of lead 210 in each increment, as you can see in this graph here. And then we can use the law of radioactive decay to age each interval. Once we know how old the interval is, we can calculate the elevation change in millimeters per year. Second method that we use is referred to as rod surface elevation tables, or R sets. And you can see in this cartoon here, this is an example of an R set that has been installed in a mangrove. And so what you do, and I didn't say it was easy to install an R set, but you have to haul a generator and an incredibly heavy jackhammer, as well as incredibly heavy rods into the mangrove forest. You jackhammer these rods through the peat until you hit a point of refusal, which is this basalt or this fossil coral underneath the mangrove. I then concrete that into place and return with this arm, this SCT arm attaches to the rod, and then you lower these nine fiberglass pins through the arm until the pin rests on the forest floor. You then measure the height of the pin above the arm over time, and so you can either measure the pins will rise or they will fall, and you measure that to calculate elevation change in a mangrove forest. This is an example of some data that we collected from that island Pompeii in the sap wall of mangrove. The blue line represents sea level, and you can see it's gradually increasing over time. But you can also see we've got three plots, our interior, which appears to be keeping up with sea level rise, and our riverine and fringe, which are not. So this interior site, since it's keeping up with sea level, we consider it to be resilient, and it should be prioritized for conservation, while the riverine and the fringe would require more active restoration. The third method that we're using is brand new, and I think this is the state of the future for measuring surface elevation change in mangroves. And this is using a compact biomass lidar system, which is a light detector and ranging system. So you've already installed an R-set system into the mangrove, and so you can attach the lidar unit to the set, and then the laser can scan an entire plot in a matter of minutes. And you can collect anywhere up to 100,000 points with each scan. Because the scans are lasers, we're no longer relying on human accuracy or error to lower those pins onto the surface, so we increase our precision and we increase our accuracy. And this is an example of a result from one of these plots, where you can see these warmer yellow areas represent areas that the mangrove is increasing in elevation, and these cooler blue areas represent areas where they are decreasing. So those are three methods that we use to measure elevation. And then just lastly, I want to wrap up here. So we took the data from these plots. We had 48 permanent plots we installed on this one island, and we used all the information, the forest plot data, the carbon data, the carbon burial data, and the elevation change data. And we built a vulnerability assessment of the mangroves using a warmer model, which stands for the wetland accretion rate model for ecosystem resilience. And so the model looks at the current extent of mangrove, so you can see this current map here in the upper portion of the slide. The different colors correspond to different mangrove species. And then we looked at how those changed over time under various sea level rise scenarios. In this case, we used the 117 centimeters by 2100. You can see there's not a lot of change by 2060, but once we get into 2080, all these red species appear, which is Rhizophora stylosa. And by 2100, we actually see some loss of mangroves, which are the black shaded areas. So there's still some time to implement some management to possibly counter the impacts from sea level rise on this island. So I'd like to conclude then with permanent mangrove monitoring plots can provide information, excuse me, they can provide information needed for better management of mangroves and for the continued provision of goods and services that so many people rely on. They also provide, and I think this is key, valuable education experiences for students, scientists, conservations, and most importantly, decision and policymakers. So I think this is something, as Dr. Nehru had said in his presentation, there isn't a lot of long-term monitoring data in India, and I think it would be a great idea to start to collect some of this long-term data. So I thank you for your time. I think I went a few minutes over. I apologize, Rupesh, and I will hand it back to you. Thank you, Richard. Thank you very much for not only sharing some new cool ideas about how do we measure elevation change in mangrove system, but also sharing the importance of mangrove themselves, how they cope up with the sea level rise and why we need to have better understanding of the mechanism behind it. If we understand it better, if we have better ways to monitor it, measure it, then we can perhaps be better prepared to handle it. So thank you so much. These are cool new advancements and I think this is also pertinent because in our last two days discussions, we didn't touch upon too much of like methods and new techniques and the importance of permanent monitoring plots or time series data is something that we did touch upon. And that is where the second speaker in this session comes in, Professor Punsilov Badri. He has been working in Sundarbans and had maintained a long-term monitoring of at least water quality parameters and other things, and he's here to share his thoughts. So I will briefly introduce him because there may be some new attendees who have joined today. So for the interest, I will reintroduce Professor Badri for today's session. He is a professor at Eiser Polkata, and he leads the Center for Climate and Environmental Studies, which is an interdisciplinary center on earth and environmental sciences with societal relevance. And as you can see, mangroves fit in there very well. He's the recipient of prestigious swanjanti fellowship award in the area of earth and environmental sciences by government of India in 2019. And his research interests include bio complexity of microbial system, including mangroves, biogeochemical cycling and sea level rise, nature-based solutions to ecosystem restoration and developing technologies for biomanitoring of coastal biotopes. He published more than 80 period articles. So, Professor Badri, we are open to hear your wise and insightful comments and talk over to you. Thank you Dr. Pumia. It's very kind of you. I hope you can see the slides maybe. Yes, it's clear. Yeah, please go ahead. Thank you so much. I have what I'll talk about or share my thoughts about, you know, in this small talk is as Richard has already mentioned some of the new interesting insights, the techniques and approaches that we can take but also putting into context from the Indian mangrove research and view point because there are a lot of other factors that also plays a very important role. Our research must align with the economics of the country. The socioeconomics is something that is very important. So we have to, you know, you look into that aspect also. So, I have identified few areas that I think is important but of course, you know, this is never the comprehensive. I think it was already highlighted that why time series monitoring is very important. So we should have a lot more time series monitoring sites in different mangroves of India. And I think that that comparison is required to understand the dynamics normalization of the data that is something which is a big issue I think between the east and west coast of India and certain aspects. The second thing is the environmental DNA bio monitor. I think that is something which we need to really work very hard upon and emphasize because now the technologies are so robust that we can actually bio monitor quite a big area, you know, in a small amount of time and the depth of information that we get is really huge, where from you can deduce a lot more information and then integrate those information into policy making decisions. So, so that linkages is very important. The third thing is automation is very important, you know, there are sites and areas in many mangroves for example in Sundarbans or even in the Annaman and Nicaragua where actually physically going down and sampling can be a challenge. You know, because of logistic issues but I think we can take the help of automation. I think that would play a very important role. Of course, it requires a lot more calibration and we are just when taking into account the local factors and settings. We need to integrate automation with relative sea level rise measurements I think that is something which is not much we are getting from from Indian subcontinent I mean more from the Institute measurements that's what I of course we are all the data that you're deducing are from the satellite the best deductions. The fourth one is citizen science led by local companies I think this is something which we can play very very important. There are millions of people who are living in the in the mangrove fringes, and they can be you know, they're very intelligent. The knowledge is much stronger than than me at least, and we can actually work with them and get a depth of information that would be very very important. And then the last one which I've said that emerging areas, for example, already got highlighted by Dr. Vera before and also Nehru has highlighted micro plastics. The other one is heat waves, and the last one last according to me not the least of course, ocean acidification, coastal ocean acidification is a big issue that we don't understand. So, we have a time series site. It's more than a decade now. So this is the Indian part of the Sundarbans. And our time series site is on this western most part of the Sundarbans so down south of the western most part of Sundarbans. And the reason for having this time series site on the western most part is of course, you know, we wanted to look at the influence of the of the Bay of Bengal on the on the mangrove ecosystem and biogeo chemical processes. So therefore that actually played a very important role so we have three stations that we keep monitoring, you know, since 2010 is the weekly monitoring we have. And we look at water sediment, you know, vegetation data also. And this data set is actually available for anybody to use it. And so I'll send you the link of that so you can download the data and visit for your purpose because we think in situ validation with remote sensing is required and this data can might be of some help. Also, there are a lot of other factors are there like human habitation aquaculture forms so we wanted to look at the look at the effects of those on the time series site. And so that you can deduce a more bigger picture of what is going on in the Sundarbans. Now, as I said yesterday I'm sure yesterday this is the kind of data that you get you know for example here I've plotted the salinity data throughout the year and you can see what's for 10 years almost is plotted and you can see the three stations are there. But what is interesting to note is that actually between 2010 and 2019 or 20. The salinity has shifted, it has become more marine than what is showing actual and the reason for that is that the freshwater flow, which is coming through this part of the island the southern island from the river Ganga, the major distributor Ganga that is decreasing. So it's a more saline condition which is prevailing so so the effect on the vegetation you're also seeing you see more marine tolerant species that are that are actually appearing in the system compared to the ones that typically find in Sundarbans. Now, another important thing is the time series data can give a much bigger understanding of the kind of changes that might be happening here what you have done is I'm showing you as an example here we have plotted the nitrogen. For example, in this case of course is we have plotted the nitrate and you can see that the nitrate also source and oscillation, but in force of time the nitrate shows a variability and now know that most of this nitrogen that's coming in the system from the breakdown of organic matter is actually anthropogenically derived nitrogen so more ammonia and we are coming into the system with anthropogenic origin and that we have reduced based on stabilized. You know measurements. So, so then what is the response of this so much nitrogen that is there in the system. Well, we can look at the microbial communities, these are the surface water microbial communities, they do a lot of the processes at the Benedict Bellagic level also so here you can see one thing about the Sundarbans system is of course it's a proteobacteria proteobacteria dominated system but you have got a lot of delta proteobacteria typical signal of freshwater but we are now seeing a shift of that freshwater into alpha proteobacteria which is more marine and we are now able to deduce or able to identify areas in the Sundarbans based on the microbial signature and the nitrogen signature so now we deduce the areas of high nitrogen and low nitrogen areas in since Sundarbans so so so this we think the time series is playing a very important role because this data set has been very important for us to understand the other the other aspect I wanted to highlight is you know when you look at biological production primary production for example the aquatic one. We tend to forget about a group called cyanobacteria you know, and our our studies of the time series side has shown that cyanobacteria can be very important players in certain times of the year. They can fix about 0.48 to 14.75 grams of carbon just for you know so and that is of course a seasonal at a particular season so so they are very important players and this is something you know which has been missed out the EDNA monitoring has kind of helped us to understand because now. Doing this work we also have a better understanding of the fish stock the nursery ground that the feeding grounds how the productivity is changing that so so this kind of information becomes very prominent. We did not stop out here I mean we have moved more eastward of the Sundarbans and here what we have done is we are monitoring the tiger habitats of Sundarbans you know when you talk about Sundarbans that some tiger is there is something which is very charismatic species. And here we are monitoring 30 stations in the eastern part of Sundarbans, okay, and we are using completely biological EDNA based approaches of course microscope is also there. But this is giving us a much better understanding here you on the left hand side you can see the contour maps of the salinity profiles in different times of the year upper one is in the months pre monsoon and the low earnings in the post months of the year. So to understand the what is the time capacity of this of this landscape and waterscape in terms of tiger habitat or tiger. We are developing that so EDNA protocol is becoming very very important in this. I talked about the sensors yesterday also a little bit. I think we have to develop sensors which will fit into the system because there are impediments are there you cannot transfer the data remotely have to store the data. There is an issue out here so we have developed some sensors that we are validating and you're getting some information initial sets of information of how the for example the the salinity trains are changing in terms of the title regime. And we're working on that at the moment so so I think that integration will become very very important. Dr. Brera mentioned about the cyclones you know in in the bia bengal the cyclones are becoming very prominent. We are linking the effect of the cyclones with some charismatic species when you talk about Sundarbans for example we think of tigers, but actually it's also the habitat of a keystone species the horseshoe crab you know just not really in the last two 50 million years they have survived by the dinosaurs of the extinct. So we are trying to understand how the habitat of the horseshoe crab is affected and can you deduce information of climate and sea level rise. Here we are taking a completely different approach it's a citizen science approach you're involving the future of communities. So I think this is something which is going to become very very important in the long run to get the information. And what they are doing is there, we provide them with a cell phone and whenever they get any horseshoe crab in the habitat they take the photo to share the information they call so so our depth of information is becoming more and more important. The other aspect is to train the young minds. So here on the right hand side you can see what we have done is, we have done tagging of the geotagging of the plastics that are found in the mangroves you know one example. And we are developing an index of you know what the plastic distribution is so this is completely a citizen science driven project. It started after the cyclone yes and and it's still continuing a very enthusiastic bunch of young early researchers and and common citizens were involved in this process. Now I come to the end of it in the priority areas I think one of the important things you need to engage with the stakeholders. As scientists we need to get engaged with the stakeholders. And here in this case what we do is we really engage with the panchayas the grand panchayas because they are the ones who implement many of the things on the ground or they are the ones who see the kind of changes that are happening and we are working with the grand panchayas, the forest department, the national government trying to declare within the Sundarbans, ecologically sensitive areas. So this is something a new concept that you're working on, which is outside the biosphere reserve but actually you can we find a lot of biodiversity and a lot of economic value is there so we are working with the team so here citizen science is a very very important aspect. Last, I know I've taken a lot of time I want to end up that ocean acidification is a big problem we have just established the South Asian regional carbon ocean acidification is being supported by the global ocean acidification observing network IAEA and UNESCO, and you've got all the BOV countries including Malaysia in this effort. So seven countries from Oman to Malaysia involved, and we are developing the regional framework of ocean acidification measurement that will help understand and improve the blue economy and there are some work is there I want to end up with the last point with my colleagues if from our in in France we are now embarking on a very ambitious work. Automation and artificial intelligence in Bantik Honor Research. So this is something which we are we were working upon and mangrove Bantik Honor is something that is very underrepresented and automation is going to play an important role so so I've tried to give some idea. What the emerging areas are and what should be done and you are welcome to visit the site of our time city site take the data will be we are very welcome. We welcome collaborations and take we can discuss talk and thank you so much for listening and thank you doctor who may have for patiently not stopping me from from that talk so thank you so much. Thank you doctor by the way I came very close to calling you out but your presentation was interesting and I think everyone was glued to that so I educated. So thank you for sharing your insights and the work you've been doing, particularly of importance is the new South Asian Center for monitoring ocean acidification, as well as your long term monitoring in Sundarbans. We are here to sort of galvanize more collaborate more partnerships and collaborations and with the topics that have been covered with the research that we have been presented and more so looking toward future I think we have a lot of reasons to believe that this will indeed result in more integrative collaborative research and partnership. So with that I would like to invite our next panel member, and who will take us to an entire new direction or dimension of mangrove research. Here is Dr. Shilpa Pandey. She is a scientist at the Birbal Sani Institute of Paleo Sciences Lucknow. So, as the title indicates, we are going to learn about history of mangroves and Dr. Shilpa Pandey mentioned about horseshoe crab in this mangrove ecosystem. The dinosaurs have gone away but they have survived this also tells about the uniqueness of the species that are there. So I believe Dr. Shilpa Pandey will share some of insights in looking in the past, how past can inform future. Dr. Shilpa Pandey is working or her research interests include paleo climatology, paleo ecology, vegetation dynamics, sea level changes, and it no botany. He has significantly contributed on high resolution paleo analogical record from Eastern Western coastal regions of India to reconstruct late quaternary, vegetational climatic dynamics and paleo sea level change with reference to mangroves. Because these are topics and these are words we have not heard in the conference so far. In the last three days, no one used these words. So I am excited to learn something new and how we can improve that. So there is a very detailed, very long, illustrious career of Dr. Pandey. It's all available on our website. To save time, I'm inviting her to go ahead with her presentation. Over to you Dr. Shilpa Pandey. Thank you, Dr. Rupesh. And very good morning to all the panel members and participants over here. First of all, I would like to thank the organizer for giving me this opportunity. Am I audible? Yes, yes. Very clear. Yeah. Okay. So thank you once again. So today as Dr. Rupesh has talked about that I'm going to talk on paleo ecology that to with this special reference to Indian mangroves. Say, before I start to share that for last 13 years I have been working in different parts of mangroves area. And so I'm just going to share my few experiences with you. As everybody knows that the ecology is to study the complex relationship between the living organisms and that to with environment, and what paleo ecology, that means the study of the ecology in the past. So what this paleo ecology, especially talks about or is useful for us, because with the help of the paleo ecology we can reconstruct the biotape that lived in the past that the plants and animals too. And we can also reconstruct the communities that lives in the past, and we can talk about the past landscapes ecosystems. Therefore, it is very, very important to keep into consideration. Biological, geochemical and other proxies from natural archives helps us to reconstruct ecological and evolutionary systems deep into the past. Similarly, if you would like to understand how ecosystem have responded in the past disturbances and other parts like evaluating their resilience to protection for generations and defining their pre-anthropology, the paleo ecology is very, very important. And at the same time, if you'd like to identify and understand the ecological and evolutionary process, so we need to understand the paleo ecology and we need to do the paleo ecological studies. And if you would like to integrate all the analysis at the point, then it can feel the unexpected legacies of extinction, these are current ecosystem, which we cannot do all alone with the modern system. So here there are few stages in paleo ecological study, first we need to define the research problem then choose the site, proper site where we can take up the paleo ecological studies. And then we need to collect the samples and based on the collection, we need to have the microforces and microforces studies and which can help us to reconstruct the organisms, populations, communities and finally we can talk on the lines of the ecosystem and landscapes and the past environments. So here you can see that before we collect the samples, we need to understand the vegetation cover, present-day vegetation cover in that particular area. And then with the help of the corridors or trenching method, we do collect the samples from the field. So here you can easily see that we can collect the samples from the lakes and then we take the samples on the field also we do the subsampling, we take the samples to the labs and with the help of the chemical processing we identify and we extract the pollen from other microforces and then we do identify under the microscope then we do the quantification and then gradually we reconstruct the paleo environment and past vegetation. So there are a few types of paleo, paleo-ecological proxies or the evidences. In case of the biological proxies we do use the pollen spores, styrofoam, styroflagellates, forameniphera and others too, like phytoliths also we do use as a proxy for doing the paleo-ecological studies. And if you talk about the physical proxies, we do generally use the CHEW-KMSP, paleo-miticin, isotope, LOI and radocarbon dating, especially radocarbon datings we do use to fix the chronology of the sediment. So there are certain advances in paleo-ecology. So like if in order to understand the effect of climate change on biodiversity, we should know how diversity from species to ecosystem react to past climatic changes. So we need to understand some of the molecular methods as Dr. Professor Bahadri has talked about this environmental DNA studies. So various molecular methods and proxies are available to infer the past communities, especially metabagodin and metachinomics, which can take us, which can talk about the paleo-ecology in the past. And by sequencing ancient DNA from sediments or fossils, we can reconstruct local dynamics of microbes too. And there are other biomarkers like leaflexes, fatty acids and chlorophyll-related pigments, which can provide these to infer prior environmental conditions. So likewise, by using the molecular methods and some of the traditional paleo-ecological proxies we can talk on or we can infer the past ecology. So if you see the history of the mangroves or how the mangroves have appeared in the past and how long, so we can say, and most of the participants, I hope they are aware that the first recorded mangrove is the palm, naipa frutikens, and it aged around 75 million years ago. And another most important mangrove that is a phone acoustic and orient which diverged during the late Cretaceous time period. And if you talk about the rhizophora, which we generally, which is a very, very common mangrove species, so it has a window of 47.8 to 54.6 million. So similarly, the most of the mangrove ancestors were presumably so much by sea level rise during the warm period and they adapted to intertidal conditions. So, similarly, the xylocarpus started diverging from its terrestrial relatives say around 19.4 million years and against the diverse say around 16.8 million years. So as we all know that the mangroves are very, very important and very different from other terrestrial ecosystem because of their root architectures. So these mangroves, especially in terms of the paleoecology or the paleo environmental studies, why does mangroves are important because with the help of this root system they trap the sediments very easily including pollen spores and other biotic proxies also get trapped with the help of these roots and they easily get preserved in the geological column and which provides the clue to the environmental and climatic conditions in the past. As we all know that the mangroves are very, very sensitive to the sea level changes they grow on the shoreline and the shoreline movements get as is very much associated with the sea level rise and fall. So mangroves moves landward and seaward with respect to the transgression and regression and because of this they are very good indicators of the sea level fluctuations. And, and because of this also they are called the dark ecosystem. In order to the paleoecological studies, I have used the pollen spores as the biotic proxies and by pollen spores because it can tell you about the past vegetation and the past climate. So with the help of the different pollen aperture size shapes and clustering and wall structures we can identify I mean to say that based on the morphological variations we can identify the different species from the sediments so just I'm going to share with you one of one of the few case studies from the Indian mangroves. So I have been working in Sundarbans and I have covered most of the parts of Sundarbans especially some of the core areas also, like Nethidopani, Sudannikali, Fakarala and such and other than mangroves I'm also working in the Bhittarkarnika to understand the modern pollen vegetation relationship and also the past vegetation changes and development and dynamics of the mangroves ecosystem in this area. Most of the speakers have talked about the Indians Sundarbans so I am not going to do the topic. So in order to understand the modern pollen vegetation relationship we have collected different surface samples from the entire Sundarbans and we found that the pollen analysis of the surface samples shows the pollen spore deposition is very, very compatible with the actual characteristics of the area. So recently in 2018 and 19 I published papers on the modern pollen distribution from the Sajnikali and Pakirala and there is another paper published from Pakirala by the Haydn Behaling in 2008. So if anybody is interested to work on the paleophilological studies from Sundarbans, so they can refer these papers. And for the past vegetation and the mangrove that to understand the mangrove development dynamics, we are also working on the Charkali and the Kaikali areas of Sundarbans so likewise we do collect up to three meter five meter as you can see in the picture that by the Charkali method we had collected cold or the near about three to three point five meter deep and if you can go more deeper that is very good for the paleocologists to have the more and more deeper reports. So there is another case study from the Chilka Lagoon and that too from the Holocene time period. So as we all know that the Chilka Lagoon is divided into four sectors and another sector is more dominated by the freshwater and if you talk about the outer channel. The outer channel has more traditional saline conditions over there. So the paleological records which I'm sharing with you is collected more towards from the northern sector. So this collection has been done by the Professor Burkaskar from Germany and by a very hard work we were able to collect the samples because as you know that it becomes very difficult to collect the samples from the lake within the lake and the lagoon. From the adjacent areas it's very not that much difficult but from within the lagoon it's very very it requires very hard work and a lot of other things are required to take up this kind of studies. So luckily we got the dates up to the 12,000 years before present. And the study, the paleo-economic, paleo-economic studies which we have taken up from this area tells about that during the age of time period the sea level has did not reach the area and this area was under the fluid influence. And during our studies we found the two phases of mangrove development and that is between the 10,000 to 8,000 years before present and between 8,000 to 5,000 years before present. Especially when the development of mangroves was taking place or the abundance of mangrove forests have been reported in the past which indicates the initiation of the warming phase and that started near about 10,000 years before present. And as I told that the diversification of the mangrove started between 8,000 to 5,000 years before present which shows the stabilization condition or the stabilized conditions of the marine freshwater environment. And again, this rich mangrove vegetation especially in the Chilka Lagoon started deteriorating after 5,000 years before present that might be due to the relative sea level fall. And the major changes which we found that is around the 2,000 years before present, the mangrove started disappearing from this area. And presently you can see that we found various scattered patches of the mangroves and most of them are planted mangroves not the natural mangroves over there. So one publication is available of late Holocene time period that was published in partner international from the Chilka Lagoon itself. And after this I would like to take you to the under months. As you know, working on the paleo-ecological or the paleological records it becomes very difficult to work in the mangrove areas because as everybody knows that the Sundarbans, Mr. Royal Bengal Tiger, he is very dangerous. So he doesn't allow the paleo-ecologists to work over there and most of the ecologists also might be facing the same problem. So if we talk about the Bhidhakarnika and the Andaman areas, so here there is no fear of the Royal Bengal Tiger but we have to be very worried and we have to be careful from the crocodiles. So these are the few challenges which paleo-ecologists are facing in the Indian mangroves area. And under one of the fast-track projects which was funded by the DST, I got an opportunity to work in the Andaman and I had collected the 25 surface samples from the right mangrove which is very very important mangrove in the south Andaman and we did the paleo-ecological and geochemical studies from this area and we found that this the pollen from the local vegetation was more and more dominant and whereas the regional vegetation surrounding the deposition site is poorly represented in the mangrove sediments. Similarly pollen from mangroves are locally restricted and reflect the distribution of the source plants and mangrove types. In our studies we have also taken clear consideration of the environmental variables like PSEllinated and Temperature DO and the greatest concentration of the electron effects of evergreen desertias and mountain components are derived from the surrounding lens. So I could say that this was the new information on the modern pollen assemblages and their relationship to the vegetation types and environmental conditions which can be applied to other mangroves ecosystem of south and south East Asia regions to reconstruct paleo vegetation and paleoclimatic changes. And other than Andaman's we have also worked in the Gulf of Kach area and we are in the Saurashtra too and presently I'm running one project also in both the areas. So we have reported the process. Sorry to interrupt. Do you have a lot more slides to cover? No, no, hardly. We are already. Can you wrap it please? Yeah, sure. So these are the few publications which you can go through if you are interested and as I was talking about that we are more dealing with the pollen spores from the mangrove sediments. So these are the few images which are beautiful images of the mangrove pollen. And these are the terrestrial pollen, which we recovered from the mangrove sediments. And these are the few spores and there are certain marine elements for many pherodinoflagellates and few freshwater diatoms have also been reported from the entire mangrove sediments of Indian regions. Thank you so much. Dr. Pandey, and sorry for interrupting because I didn't realize how many slides you have. No issues. So thank you for taking us to the beautiful world or historical world of mangroves and it's important and pertinent to see what existed where particularly when we are looking at identifying areas and to restore, replicate or to just know what was the mangrove extent where they existed. So knowing a little bit more about the history can help us advance or make decisions for future. So thank you. It's very fascinating. I was very impressed with the pit or the trends that you showed in one of the picture with two people in there. We take soil cores and we pride ourselves by taking more than a meter deep core and here you have a pit where two people are standing and sampling so that was very impressive to say at least. So that brings us to the closure of our three talks from panel members. We had hoped to have a sort of a longer discussion and conversation in this panel discussion. So I guess this looks a little bit unlikely given where we are in terms of time and try to keep in program, but I think what is important is that the information the knowledge that has been shared that the inside all these panel members have brought about, and the speakers have brought about mangrove research, new technologies, new techniques, new ways of understanding these ecosystems in terms of advancement in the techniques in terms of use of new methods. For example, Dr. Berra talked about unoccupied aerial vehicle mobile apps. Dr. Richard mentioned about using terrestrial LiDARR sets and led to 10 in measuring sediment cores and whatnot. And Dr. Badri also discussed about long term monitoring and using EDNA techniques to understand them. So these are fascinating new new areas of research. I really wish that we had a little more or someone a speaker who talk about new areas in terms of socio economic understanding because we discussed this extensively yesterday, talking about how this is a, interesting to look at this ecosystem in a holistic manner, and you cannot extricate just the biophysical from socio economic so such research advances needs to go in hand in hand. So, which is interesting also because the next speaker we have is Dr. Farid, who sort of works in these similar areas, he has very impressive publications and long research career. And he's here with us on a very interesting new topic. He's here to share some of the priority questions in future mangrove science and effective conservation. So I think I am hoping that Professor Farid will try to bring this together in his presentation next. So what we missed in sort of discussion, I think Farid is going to cover single handedly and we are very thankful for him to have us do for him to be with us today. It's very early in Belgium where he's joining us so we cannot be more thankful for him to making time for all three days and also answering question being engaged in conversations and everything. Thank you for a brief introduction for you. I think everyone here knows you and have referred your work so we are not new to you, but just for some new early carry researchers or researchers joining from India who may not have known much about you. You are working as a professor at the Free University of Brussels, and you've conducted research on mangrove in about 20 countries during last 30 years. I've published in a recent, nearly about 200 year review paper, guided 26 PhD students and more than 160 master's students. You are awarded eight international scientific awards for your research. And according to Web of Science, you are the second most productive mangrove researcher in general and the first when dealing with mangrove, ethnobiology and sociology. You are also founding and managing director of Tropic Mundo, a master's program that awards full scholarships to students from many developing countries to study tropical biodiversity and ecosystem. So this is particularly of note to our very young mangrove or budding mangrove researchers who may be interested to do PhD, they should get in touch with you. So with that for it over to you. Thank you so much. I think now the time is already better it's seven o'clock with some other people I saw. It's 2am I saw some students from Canada, which is also falling asleep probably so respect for all those people that are in other time zones of the world. Let me share my screen. Can you see my screen in prison? It's coming up I believe. Yes, now it's good. Go ahead. All right. Thank you very much. I only have 15 slides so I will make it short because it's it is actually very concrete I'm not going to elaborate a lot on on research results. This is about the future actually. This is a launch of an ID on behalf of a global initiative so it's not only myself and I mean actually but it's a global initiative and I will say in a moment who is involved in who will hopefully be in the future. It's about the priority questions in future mangrove science and effective conservation. And to tell you a little bit what the initiative started from. I don't know how many amongst you are aware or are familiar with MMM. It has been mentioned in some of the talks well MMM is it stands for the meeting on mangrove macro bento so the meeting on mangrove management it has changed. MMM over time. It's the only recurrent conference in the world international conference in the world that deals with mangroves. And he started in Kenya in 2000 and went to Australia 2006. I brought this to the Indian subcontinent in 2012 and we organized it in Sri Lanka. And then in 2016 in Florida US and 2019 in Singapore. So every time there is this major conference with many mangrove scientists in the world there is also a workshop. And so this ID actually started from that post conference workshop. And who is involved or who will hopefully be involved in the future so for sure. The members of the workshop are involved and with this presentation I'm hoping to involve you but it will also involve the members of the IUCN species survival commission and more specifically the mangrove specialist group to which I belong with. And also I've seen Professor Kathiresan we have seen Professor Satya Narayana so there are multiple people that are in that mangrove specialist group. Also the participants of these countries mangrove scientists in general authors of peer reviewed papers, but then more important global regional local networks, local mangrove managers and local policymakers and then I'm emphasizing the term local. And the idea is that with the data that we will collect, we will present this mangrove research results on the MMM6 which will take place in Colombia in 2020. So there are actually six history lines that set the basis for these ideas. The first one has already been mentioned before also by another speaker, World Without Mangroves by Ducatel. That was actually, we wrote this actually in the conference workshop of 2006 so it was in the MMM took place in Australia. And that was a problematic signal of course it was just a letter, but it was a problematic ringing of the alarm bell. And 20 years later almost in Singapore, we saw that the trends of decreasing mangrove surfaces they were better now they're not increasing yet but they're better now so we talked about conservation optimism in current biology. I'm going to continue with Daniel Fissel. Another history line is that public perception so mangroves are doing bad but on top of that very often people start introducing mangroves by saying something bad. And mangroves, they're very bad, they're full of mosquitoes but then there are ecosystem services. That's not the way to go. That's not the way to go because economic developers all they hear is mangroves stink and mangroves are full of mosquitoes and that is used as a reason to convert mangroves even more. We have to bring out the beauty of mangroves with these public perceptions of what mangroves are they really matter in conservation. Third history line is that of failed restoration and rehabilitation initiatives have been many papers throughout the last 20 years that highlighted restoration of mangroves. But restoration that was not scientifically underpinned so restoration in areas of which we as scientists can say a priority that they're not satisfied. That's also another important thing that we have to go towards restoration in areas where they can actually. Another history line is that of degradation of mangroves and how you conceptualize that. There was a mention to do this indicator that we can use. There is an outcome from the MMM5 workshop by Yandoy et al in which we try to use indicators and real sources and references that can help you to estimate whether a mangrove is doing good or bad or average. And then one more study line is again about restoration activities and we've seen that in some areas actually the environmental conditions change. Dr. Nero is one of the pioneers in showing that the Andaman Islands has been uplifted on one side and then subsided at the other side. And so the environmental conditions in which mangroves were they have changed. We call them we call this shifted baselines basically there is also a paper from myself. Can you see that emphasize that these shifted baselines are very important because there is no point in trying to restore mangroves in areas that have changed environmental conditions so much that you cannot. And another important point is that you can you can plant mangroves but a mangrove if you look at the definition of Mukherjee a talent 2014 is not just the trees. So counting trees and looking at density to establish how much how successfully your replantation was. It's not a good indicator. In fact, there is a lot of fauna and crabs you cannot plan them sales you cannot plan them these microbiota. That has been referred to in the previous presentations you cannot replant that they have to come by themselves, unless they're already present before plantation but that's often not the case. And finally, the, the current and future view of mangrove is still that that it is, it is continuing to degrade, not as bad as 20 years ago, but, but still so what we want to do what is the objective of these global initiatives. We want to identify the future scientific curiosity driven on one hand, and the other side of the managerial need driven questions to which science management and or governance needs an answer. I can come up with 101 different interesting scientific questions in my little office in Belgium 4000 kilometers away from nearest mangrove, but is that what the local people are waiting for is that what the local scientists the local managers the local policymakers are waiting for. And I think we have to go towards researching what they need an answer on. And so that's why we organize this very inclusive. Study, actually, in which we invite you all to participate. We want to execute this in the remain 21 and 22 and as I said we want to have published and presented especially shared with the world. So how can you help with this is participating in this online survey and it's very easy there's only two questions it's there's a number of some questions but they're basically two questions. More importantly, bring this to your mangrove managers bring this to your local policymakers in all your countries you want only talking about India but about 126 countries in which mangroves are found. The questions are very easy. In your opinion what are the most important questions to which mangrove science needs an answer. On the other hand, to what mangrove management needs an answer. And for each of these questions we are interested to know which country talking about at the station scale, and which time period you want to see these questions asked. And basically ends with a few questions about your professional experience how long have you been working on the mangrove was we want to have an ID, who is answering these questions but it's completely anonymous. So what is the place where you can find the survey. The one in blue is currently unavailable but it will be the future link where you can find this survey but otherwise in the chat window mean actually will post the long one it's of course impact people to stopping it from the screen. So it will be in a link in the chat window but that's the place where the shared Google form is actually. And so if you have any questions about it you can contact either one of us. I want to end my call because it's also quite quite important you mentioned the managing function in Tropic Mundo Tropic Mundo is an international master degree in which we have lots of scholarships fully paid scholarships for any country in for students from any country and the poll is open so emphasize this just go to Tropic Mundo. So that's my short contribution so I hope with this talk I can invite you to think about where science and it's to go in the future and about which questions we really. Thank you for your. Thank you for it. Thank you for taking us to the journey of the mangrove conferences through time and how this also sort of indicates over time the interest in mangroves have grown and the role these kind of scientific conferences have played in communicating science in making. You know shedding light on the important challenges that we have through publications through engagement through discourses like this, and I'm pretty sure people who are attending here will not only participate in your survey themselves but also as you ask them they will take it to their own mangrove managers as researchers, policymakers, so we can have a wider cast net of people and bringing the information which is locally relevant which is, as you rightly pointed out very much needed. So with that, I have a pleasure to close this session, and we will move on to our next program item, which is concluding remarks, which will be provided by Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran. But before I hand over to Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran, I see Professor Kathiresan has raised a hand. Yes, please go ahead. Mangrove bioprospecting is an important area for research because mangroves are traditionally used as medicine for years together, decades together. So what is required is scientific validation for the traditional knowledge on the medicinal value of mangroves. We have done a lot of pioneering work and the mangroves have tremendous potential to control the viruses. So this is the need of the other, we need more work on the medicinal aspects of mangroves or bioprospecting of mangroves. Thank you, Rupesh. Thank you, Professor Kathiresan. Yes, indeed. Thank you for bringing this out. I think we didn't talk about this aspect. But it's really difficult to capture the entire diversity of topics and these important points in a relatively small period of three small online webinars or three days of the short webinars. But I think we did, all of us do recognize that there was opportunity as well as some of the gaps that needs to be addressed. And I think we all mangrove researchers, mangrove lovers will move from this point with much more energy, much more enthusiasm, with much more ideas. So with that, I will pass on to Dr. Nehru to give the wrapping remarks for today or concluding remarks for today. And I also like to mention that at this point in the chat box, you will see a link. This is for all participants that they will see a link to complete survey for this workshop. So please click that link and complete this before you close this meeting. So over to you, Nehru. Thank you, Rupesh. It's been a roller coaster ride for the last three days and we had an interesting session and it's really, really difficult to conclude it in a five minute session. So I, but I try my best to cover all the basis. So how it started in fact this the conference. I think some six months ago only me and Rupesh we ever had our first chat. And then then for some time, we hadn't had any discussions and then some three months ago we came together to discuss our various activities and then even this pandemic situation so we were just discussing how we can go about things and we already had this idea of, you know, both of us had this idea of having a regional, you know, conference on mangrove where we can get to, you know, a collaborative effort of, you know, putting many people who are working in Indian subcontinent on mangroves together in a one platform to share their knowledge, and which can eventually take us to the next level like I mentioned in my presentation, building bridges for collaborative research is one of the major major focus of this workshop. I am really, really hopeful that in future this the some of the panel members or some of the speakers and the participants will come forward for more collaborative research. And, yeah, of course, when we did, when we started talking about this conference, the first, first interesting point when Dr. Shiva Kumar, one of the welcome address speakers mentioned to me when I floated these ideas that make sure you try to include people of various backgrounds like academicians, researchers, scientists, and especially policymakers and NGOs. So that was a wonderful idea because that kind of provides a holistic, holistic way of taking things forward otherwise if it is just a researchers, then it stays with the researchers right so it's a better way we try to include as many diversity in terms of speakers as concerned. So, we were very glad that we, we, we managed at least to some proportion to achieve that. And on the whole we had 19 resource persons from 19 institutions from resource persons of 19 institutions of which 12 from India and seven institution seven institutional representations from abroad. And also the number of participants over the days were very, very encouraging. We had almost more than 400, around 400 registrations for each day event, and that was really, we haven't really expected such a high number of registrations also every day we had around 200 registrations for a, then again, some of the one of the increasing thing and most importantly, we had parties, we had participations from more than 30 countries, and being a regional conference and, and that's the you know, advantage this online platforms providers, suddenly we had some 30 more than 30 country participants attending this conference. That means we are very hopeful that it will lead to a very good outcomes in the future. And we had three different days and three different things, each day had a panel discussion each day at a keynote address, and each they had a two talks of, of the contemporary research and all the sessions were wonderful and many, many, many, we are very thankful to all the speakers, especially many people had made their effort to answer questions in the chat box itself, because of the time time constraint, many speakers managed their answers and we are very glad that. And last but not least, this conference was started and this webinar was started with the aim to bring mangrove researchers together as, especially who are working within Indian subcontinent. And we hope that this will build bridges for future collaborative projects and future collaborations and also this may even be a starting point for a better such events in the future. With that, I hand over to Rupesh. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks a lot. And yes, it is indeed a great, great pleasure to hear the far reach of this event and so many people joined from so many places. And the amount of information insights knowledge here is impressive and we do hope that this will lead to further more impactful research, more communication and more knowledge sharing of mangroves about mangroves. So with that, we have our last but not least, we have Minakshi Poti, so to give a vote of thanks, a formal thank you vote and close the session. Just a brief introduction about Minakshi. She is an Indian PhD researcher from University Libre de Bruxelles. Sorry if I'm not pronouncing it correctly. She's based in Belgium and her studies include response to environment change in small tropical islands in the Indian Ocean which is Western Indian Ocean Islands. She is an on-site work in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India. Her research interests include ocean and coastal governance, mangrove and island social ecological system, adaptation to environmental change and participatory using participatory research methods. She uses watercolor art and creative writing to communicate science and policy by the audience. And she's also one among three organizing student organizing members of this conference. So I request Minakshi to give a vote of thanks and close the event. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to have been attending this three-day knowledge journey with all the participants and the speakers from not only India but also from around the globe. And like it was said earlier, this event comes probably once in a blue moon and is a wonderful kind event because at least in my experience I haven't attended such an expert-driven focused workshop or webinar on mangroves especially. So it feels wonderful to be together with fellow mangrove lovers. And through this three-day learning journey we saw that there's a lot of potential and promising opportunities for mangrove research and conservation in the Indian subcontinent but also beyond. So, but to firstly start thanking the partners of this workshop, which is C4ECRAF, the Wildlife Institute of India and USAID for providing both organizational support but also the funding for this three-day webinar. And a special thank you to the invited guests, speakers and panel members who are joining us from different time zones and for patiently contributing and sharing their knowledge, not only through their presentations but also in answering the questions. And of course the participants, the large number of participants who've come together and made time to listen, discuss and ask critical questions. It was especially delightful to see the exchange and the questions that were coming in through the question and answer box. And in terms of organization, I would really like to thank Kania Rahayu for the coordination and communication with all the speakers and this had a really positive impact in terms of smooth execution of the program. And also to the C4 communications team for developing promotional material and promoting the workshop online, which is probably how most of you found out about it. And then the C4IT team for preparing the webpage, setting up the Zoom sessions and especially in this day and age where everything is running online, this proof, their health was essential in the effortless running of the sessions. And then also the other organization committee volunteers, Anu Prad Singh and Thirumurugan for helping coordinate and plan the event. And of course, this event would have not been possible without the support and encouragement of Dr. Robert Nasi of C4 and Dr. Dananjay Mohan of WII. And last but definitely not the least, a huge thank you, probably not just from me, but from all the participants and the speakers for bringing us together to Dr. Rupesh Bhomia and Dr. Nehru Prabhakaran for being the brains behind this workshop. Because if not for you, then we wouldn't have got to learn and exchange all this vital knowledge. And finally, I hope this workshop has left you stimulated for further research and engagement with mangrove science. And I hope it translates into collective thinking and action, both in terms of collaboration but also policy and policy implementation on ground in India and beyond as well. Thank you very much and please don't forget to fill in the feedback survey. Thank you. Thank you Minakshi. Thanks a lot. And indeed, it is a joint effort it would not have been possible the way it was without contribution, each and everyone from top to bottom so we are extremely delighted that this could take place and how many people it has reached. The presentation and video recording of the sessions will be posted in about a week's time at the conference webpage. So if you have missed any session or if you want to revisit, please feel free to visit the website. And once again, I'd like to request all participants to fill up the survey form. We will also email you the survey link just in case if you can't do it right away today, but that will help us in planning and do even a better job next time. So with that, on behalf of Nehru and myself, I thank you and call this meeting to a close. Thanks a lot.