ABSTRACT
The maps published in the World Mangrove Atlas in 1997 (Spalding et al, 1997) were drawn from the first detailed digital map of the world's mangrove ecosystems. At that time only a few countries had begun to use satellite imagery in a systematic manner to map natural resources such as mangroves, while the costs of undertaking such analyses at global scales were still prohibitive. The global map was thus derived from a combination of ‘best available’ information, ranging from high-resolution maps derived from recent remote sensing imagery to low-resolution representations, hand-drawn by experts onto topographic base maps.
