Posted on Dec 16, 2018
Deep Seagrass Bed Could Stall Climate Change, If Climate Change Doesn't Kill It First
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Amid a sea of dire climate change news, researchers say they've found a rare bright spot.
A meadow of seagrass among Australia's Great Barrier Reef — estimated to be twice the size of New Jersey — is soaking up and storing carbon that would otherwise contribute to global warming.
Scientists call this carbon-removal powerhouse a "blue carbon sink." The term refers to an ocean or coastal ecosystem — including seagrasses, salt marshes and mangrove forests — that captures carbon compounds from the atmosphere, effectively removing carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
"These coastal Blue Carbon ecosystems can sequester or remove carbon from the atmosphere about four times the rate of terrestrial forests on land, and they store about 10 times more carbon in the system itself compared to forest on land," says Jennifer Howard, director of marine climate change at Conservation International, in an interview with NPR's Michel Martin.
A meadow of seagrass among Australia's Great Barrier Reef — estimated to be twice the size of New Jersey — is soaking up and storing carbon that would otherwise contribute to global warming.
Scientists call this carbon-removal powerhouse a "blue carbon sink." The term refers to an ocean or coastal ecosystem — including seagrasses, salt marshes and mangrove forests — that captures carbon compounds from the atmosphere, effectively removing carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
"These coastal Blue Carbon ecosystems can sequester or remove carbon from the atmosphere about four times the rate of terrestrial forests on land, and they store about 10 times more carbon in the system itself compared to forest on land," says Jennifer Howard, director of marine climate change at Conservation International, in an interview with NPR's Michel Martin.
Deep Seagrass Bed Could Stall Climate Change, If Climate Change Doesn't Kill It First
Posted from npr.org
Climate Change
Science
Australia
Meteorology
Posted >1 y ago
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I'll add some information to the above for anyone who is interested. This is an important topic, IMHO.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1890/110004
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1890/110004
A blueprint for blue carbon: toward an improved understanding of the role of vegetated coastal...
Recent research has highlighted the valuable role that coastal and marine ecosystems play in sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2). The carbon (C) sequestered in vegetated coastal ecosystems, specifically mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and salt marshes, has been termed “blue carbon”. Although their global area is one to two orders of magnitude smaller than that of terrestrial forests, the contribution of vegetated coastal habitats per unit area...
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