With six phase of remote sensing images covering Shenzhen river estuary

this paper obtained the mangrove changes in the area over some 10 years. Coupled analysis of the image interpretation results and tidal data revealed that the mangrove increased in area from 1989 to 1996

and changed little from 1996 to 2000 in area but changed in spatial distribution. Binary coding was applied to the images for the distribution of mangrove at each phase

and the coded image revealed that the changes are mainly located at the Mipu mangrove conservation region that lies to south side of Shenzhen river mouth and is under Hongkong administration. Since the image in 1994 had best quality

the other 5 phase of images were recalibrated to that of 1994 with linear regressive method

and the normalize vegetation index was calculated for each phase. Though the results of NDVI can not compared because of different image acquisition time

all the six NDVI images showed that the NDVI values became large from the edge to center of the mangrove covered area.