Bulletin No. 1, 2021

Mangroves are known to cool the climate by taking up carbon, but they also give off the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which can offset their climate benefit by more than 50% over a period of 20 years. With an Al algorithm known as the random forest , soil temperatures and salinity have now been identified as the main drivers of methane emission from a mangrove at the Mai Po Nature Reserve. Getting to the Root of Mangrove Methane Emission In goes the data As is often with AI algorithms, the random forest is a method by which the computer learns the pattern of a set of data and generalizes from it. Here it is working with the mangrove’s daily methane emissions between 2016 and 2019 and the biophysical conditions under which the emissions took place. 1 Prof. Derrick Lai Department of Geography and Resource Management methane CO 2 carbon dioxide CH 4 36 CHINESE UNIVERSITY BULLETIN NO.1, 2021