Mangroves, typical of tropical and subtropical latitudes, have become veritable natural traps for land- and sea-based waste. The roots of these trees, known as mangroves, have a great capacity to trap litter - from both land and sea - which gradually breaks down until it is buried in the muddy bottom. Now, an article in the journal Environmental Pollution warns that the accumulation of rubbish threatens the environmental balance and biodiversity of these ecosystems, as well as the well-being of nearby local communities that depend on the resources provided by mangroves.
The study analyses, for the first time and on a large scale, the pressure and state of pollution from waste in Colombia's mangroves. The first two authors of the article are Ostin Garcés-Ordóñez and Miquel Canals, from the UB Chair on Sustainable Blue Economy and the Consolidated Research Group in Marine Geosciences at the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona. The study's co-authors are Diana Romero-D'Achiardi, from the José Benito Vives de Andréis Institute of Marine and Coastal Research (INVEMAR, Colombia); and Martin Thiel, from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC, United States) and the Catholic University of the North (Chile).
A major environmental problem
The mangroves most affected by rubbish are located near Colombian coastal cities such as Cartagena de Indias, Barranquilla and Riohacha (Caribbean coast), and Bahía Solano, Buenaventura and Tumaco (Pacific coast). "On the outskirts of coastal cities and in rural areas of the Pacific, the situation is exacerbated by the lack of adequate waste collection and treatment services. As a result, nearby mangroves are often used as uncontrolled dumps, although there are also accumulations of waste in the mangroves of marine protected areas, such as those on the island of San Andrés in the Caribbean," says Ostin Garcés-Ordóñez, who is currently pursuing a PhD in the SERC's MarineGEO programme under the supervision of Martin Thiel.
