Exposure of Coastal Ecosystem Services to Natural Hazards in the Bangladesh Coast

Abstract

Significance StatementKnowledge about the impacts of natural hazards on ecosystem services is crucial to guide the effective management of ecosystem components in a particular landscape. The coastal landscape of Bangladesh is a source of numerous ecosystem services on one hand and also exposed to natural hazards, especially to tropical cyclones on the other hand. Almost every year the tropical cyclones and associated storm surges cause severe devastation to the ecosystem services in the eastern coastal region of the country. We for the very first time in Bangladesh applied the remote sensing method with the Millennium Assessment technique to map coastal ecosystem service capacity and assess their degree of exposure to the tropical cyclone in the eastern coastal region of the country. Our study identifies the aquatic environments, mangrove and hilly forests having the highest potentials of ecosystem service capacity, which needs to be protected from the natural hazards through implementing appropriate land use and nature-focused disaster management policies for sustainable, equitable, and effective use of the ecological resources.