Geospatial Analysis of Patterns and Trends of Mangrove Forest in Saudi Arabia: Identifying At-Risk Zone-Based Land Use

Mangrove ecosystems are crucial coastal habitats that support life and regulate the Earth’s atmosphere. However, these ecosystems face prominent threats due to anthropogenic activities and environmental constraints. For instance, the Saudi Arabian coast is particularly vulnerable to species extinction and biodiversity loss due to the fragility of the ecosystem; this highlights the need to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of mangrove forests in desert environments. Hence, this is the first national study to quantify mangrove forests and analyze at-risk zone-based land use along Saudi Arabian coasts over 40 years. Thus, the primary contents of this research were (1) to produce a new long-term dataset covering the entire Saudi coastline, (2) to identify the patterns, analyze the trends, and quantify the change of mangrove areas, and (3) to determine vulnerability zoning of mangrove area-based land use and transportation networks. This study used Landsat satellite imagery via Google Earth Engine for national-scale mangrove mapping of Saudi Arabia between 1985 and 2024. Visible and infrared bands and seven spectral indices were employed as input features for the random forest classifier. The two classes used were mangrove and non-mangrove; the latter class included non-mangrove land-use and land-cover areas. Then, the study employed the output mangrove mapping to delineate vulnerable mangrove forest-based land use. The overall results showed a substantial increase in mangrove areas, ranging from 27.74 to 59.31 km2 in the Red Sea and from 1.05 to 8.65 km2 in the Arabian Gulf between 1985 and 2024, respectively. However, within this decadal trend, there were noticeable periods of decline. The spatial coverage of mangroves was larger on Saudi Arabia’s western coasts, especially the southwestern coasts, than on its eastern coasts. The overall accuracy, conducted annually, ranged between 91.00% and 98.50%. The results also show that expanding land uses and transportation networks within at-risk zones of mangrove forests may have a high potential effect. This study aimed to benefit the government, conservation agencies, coastal planners, and policymakers concerned with the preservation of mangrove habitats.