Mangrove devastation blamed on climate change

Thousands of hectares of mangroves in Australia's remote north have died, scientists said on Monday, with climate change the likely cause.

Some 7,000 hectares, or nine percent of the mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, perished in just one month according to researchers from Australia's James Cook University, the first time such an event has been recorded.

The so-called dieback - where mangroves are either dead or defoliated - was confirmed by aerial and satellite surveys and was likely to have been the result of an extended drought period, said Norm Duke, a mangrove ecologist from James Cook University.