Assessing the Impacts of Land Use and Climate Change on the Mesurado Wetland: A Case Study of the Peace Island Community Portion

Abstract

Like many countries in the world, Liberia is one of those countries where wetlands exist and provide countless ecological, social, and economic benefits to communities near wetland areas. The area occupies 6 percent of Earth’s terrestrial land and exists in every continent except Antarctica. Regardless of their importance, wetlands face a significant threat from human activities and climate change impact. This study focuses on assessing the impact of land use and climate change on the Mesurado Wetland Peace Island portion. Additionally, considering temperature increase and human settlement as a driving force to the change in mangrove cover and wetland area has also led to some dis-function of the wetland's ecological services. This study has identified climate change as a major threat to the overall function of the Mesurado wetland Peace Island portion thereby reducing it in size and mangrove cover. With the findings of this paper, it has been established and statistically proven that There's a significant negative correlation between temperature and mangrove cover change (rho = -1), indicating that as temperature increases, mangrove cover decreases which validates that climate change has a direct impact on wetlands around the world by reducing their ecological services, wetland areas, mangrove cover and the Mesurado wetland in Liberia Peace Island portion is no exception. The study used a combination of data collection instruments - Geographic Information System (GIS) software and Meteoblue site. The GIS and remote sensing utilized satellite imageries to provide data on wetland area, (mangroves cover, and human settlement) changes over 4 years period (1991, 2001 2011, & 2023), identifying alterations due to both land use and climate factors. The climatic data (temperature and precipitation) was collected from Meteoblue. The publicly available precision of weather data for any area in the world is provided by this online platform.