Artificial mangrove roots caught mud along a Thai shoreline

Mongabay reported on November 4, 2026, that artificial mangrove roots tested along the shore of Samut Prakan, Thailand, have been catching sediment. The district of Phra Samut Chedi sits where the Chao Phraya River meets the Gulf of Thailand. Strong surges take 20 to 60 meters of land a year, and waves knock down the dikes around aquaculture ponds. Mangrove planting and bamboo fences had not held. A 15-month trial put root-shaped structures, made of wood-plastic composite and rubber, at 11 sites in Phra Samut Chedi and elsewhere in the province. At 10 of those sites, 16 to 88 centimetres of sediment piled up behind them.

Butsawan Bidorn, a coastal engineer at Chulalongkorn University and the study's senior author, said the pieces copy what roots do more than how they look, and that they can be installed quickly while a shore is in trouble. Months later, raised mud let shrimp farmers at one site rebuild a dike, and landowners at another start planting mangrove seedlings again. Sompratana Ritphring, of Kasetsart University, who was not part of the study, told Mongabay the structures should stay temporary, a way to make room for a living mangrove, and that the materials need watching so they do not become litter. The measured result is the trapped sediment and those two uses of it. It is not a finished coastline.