Resilience of South Asian mangroves to weather extremes and anthropogenic water pollution

Sundarbans in the coastal South Asia, the largest contiguous mangrove forest in the world, faces an intensifying compound stress of climate extremes and anthropogenically influenced water pollution. However, our knowledge about the responses of mangroves to these stressors with the recovery mechanism is largely limited. We address this research gap by delineating causal networks between in-situ observations of soil-water chemistry, carbon fluxes, and hydro-meteorological variables from Sundarbans mangroves. Our results show that mangroves recover from physiological stresses caused by weather extremes quickly, within one to two weeks and maintain stable productivity despite steeply declining nutrient composition due to human-induced water pollution. We demonstrate that mangroves maintain this stable productivity during the stress period by increasing link strength and memory with the hydro-meteorological variables of the region. Our findings highlight the resilience of South Asian mangroves to natural and anthropogenic stressors and the importance of estimating thresholds of their critical transitions.