Parts of Australia could lose their coastal mangroves to sea level rise before the end of this century, according to new research.

The loss of the quintessential coastal tree with built-in snorkels could have major knock-on effects for fisheries and nearby communities.

"Without mangrove forests, fish decline, there's reduced coastal protection, there's reduced coastal carbon sequestration," lead researcher Catherine Lovelock, who is a professor of biological sciences at the University of Queensland, said.

"Mangroves provide a whole range of ecosystem services."

In Australia, there are approximately a million hectares of coastal mangrove forests.

A rough estimate of the value of the services they provide to Australians has been put at $194 billion each year.

Australia has the second largest area of mangroves in the world, behind Indonesia. And it is not just Australia's trees that would be affected.

Calculations by Professor Lovelock and her team for the Indo-Pacific region showed that even with measures to control the release of climate-changing greenhouse gases, areas along the Gulf of Thailand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands could lose their mangroves in the next 50 years.

"We singled out the Mekong [River, in Vietnam] because it's one of the locations where mangroves are very important for people and it's also a river that has large dams proposed," she said.

"In the process of building dams, the sediment supply to the coast will be altered. That will be a negative for coastal systems. That will pose a problem in the future."

She said sediment washing off the land was usually trapped in the knotted roots of mangroves, building up soil as time goes by.

In most places in the world, mangroves accumulating soil in this way are expected to keep pace with sea level rise resulting from climate change.

But when sediments are reduced, the tidal flats that are usually home to the trees will gradually become inundated and become unsuitable for mangroves.

If there is development on the coast, the trees would have nowhere new to colonise, sealing their fate.

Mangroves in areas where there is only a small difference between high and low tide are especially at risk.

Professor Lovelock nominated Shark Bay in WA and around Adelaide as mangrove flats in Australia that are particularly vulnerable.

Mangroves in places such as north-western Australia, where the tidal range can be as much as 10 metres, are expected to cope even in scenarios with high sea level rise.

Loss of mangroves of concern to fishing community

Professor Lovelock said measuring rising sea level against accumulating sediment was all about finding a steady reference point. The technique is surprisingly low-tech.

"We go out into the mangroves with lots of stainless steel and hammer down rods that are connected to each other until they can't go anymore," she said.

"So we basically fix them into the sediment as deep as we can. Often that means hitting the rock surface that's below.

Sediment is delivered to mangrove forests in tidal water, where it contributes to elevation gains on the soil surface. ( Supplied: Ruth Reef )

"And that forms this point deep in the sediment that we measure everything relative to."

Professor Lovelock said a loss of mangroves was particularly concerning for communities that rely on fishing for their livelihood.

"Mangroves are nurseries for some fish species. In some part of their life cycle, many fish species will use mangroves," she said.

"They might forage into mangrove forests when the tide is in... they are refuges for predation in some cases.

"Another good reason to conserve your mangroves is to stop CO2 emissions. Land use change accounts for 25 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

"And the destruction of mangroves and seagrasses and salt-marsh might actually contribute to that substantially because they're so carbon rich."

The research was published in Nature.