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Project Title: INTERNET OF MANGROVES WITH OPEN SCIENCE APPROACHES FOR SUSTAINABLE MANGROVE ECOSYSTEM AND TOURISM ATTRACTION
Over the last two decades, 35% of the world's mangrove forests have been disappeared, putting mangroves conservation in jeopardy. Rampant tourism activities have been identified as one of the culprits, mostly contributed by widespread boating activity. With the unregulated number and speed of boats coming in and out from these forests, they have inhibited the mangrove seedling process and cause erosion on the mangrove banks. The problem is further aggravated with irresponsible waste disposal and boats’ oil leak into the coastal water. This study aims to design and develop a wireless Internet of Things (IoT) platform with open science approaches to mitigate this problem. Kilim Karst Geoforest Park (KKGP) will be selected as the location for this research. The research consists of the following phase (i) design and develops the IoT tag to be used by the boat operators to quantify the impact of boat activities, (ii) design and develops the buoy-platform to further understand the impact on the mangrove population, (iii) deployment of the IoT platform in the selected mangrove area and data collection via citizen science approach, and (iv) quantify the impact on tourism activities towards the mangrove conservation from dashboard analytics. All outcomes from the project, such as data, coding, and publication, will be made available open and online as part of the ‘Open Science’ ecosystem. The outcome from the study is expected to offer a significant impact to approximately 150,000 km of mangrove sites across the world. From the open science approaches, the research can be replicated by other conservationist and biodiversity researchers and expected to become among the efforts taken at the global level to conserve mangrove, while promoting sustainable tourism. This research is in collaboration with LESTARI-UKM and Koperasi Komuniti Kampung Kilim Langkawi Berhad that represent the boat operators as the citizen scientists.