BLUE CARBON: Mangrove forests may be able to store twice as much carbon dioxide as human activity produces in a year, according to a new study.
Image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Found along the edges of much of the world's tropical coastlines, mangroves are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at an impressive rate. Protecting them, a recent study says, could yield climate benefits, biodiversity conservation and protection for local economies for a nominal cost -- between $4 and $10 per ton of CO2.
Mangrove forests are ecosystems that lie at the confluence of freshwater rivers and salty seas. While they make up only 0.7 percent of the world's forests, they have the potential to store about 2.5 times as much CO2 as humans produce globally each year.
These environments, along with other forms of coastal ecosystems such as tidal marshes and sea grasses, have been given the name "blue carbon" to differentiate them from the "green" carbon of other forests, where carbon is absorbed above ground in trees.
Juha Siikamäki, a fellow at the environmental economic think tank Resources for the Future and lead author of the study, says efforts to maintain mangroves could add an enormous potential for carbon offset projects. First, their importance must be publicized.
"We're considerably behind what's been accounted with forest carbon," he said, referencing the reforesting projects in tropical forests that have garnered investment in the past two decades.
Shrimp aquaculture, fishing and rice growing -- especially in Southeast Asia -- are slowly degrading mangroves. Every five to 20 years, a biological or chemical problem affects a pond, forcing farmers or fishermen to abandon the area and dig a new pond in an undisturbed mangrove forest. A World Bank study last year found that the removal of the typical coastal wetland has added about 2,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per square kilometer per year to the atmosphere over 50 years (ClimateWire, April 12, 2011).
NGOs, World Bank look to 'blue' portfolios
Although Siikamäki's study ties successful conservation to the price of offsets in mandatory and voluntary carbon markets, the researchers also took into account other benefits unrelated to carbon, like maintaining species diversity. By switching from a strictly carbon-centric approach to a biodiversity approach, conservation efforts would cost only $1 more.
Mangroves, as well as other wetlands, absorb most carbon through soils, rather than forests' trees. While soils have a greater potential to hold carbon, the science to measure and track soil carbon is less developed, and methodologies from carbon verification bodies are still in infancy.
"It requires a little bit more work," said Steve Crooks, climate change services director at the ecosystem consulting firm ESA PWA, who also sits as a member of two international blue carbon working groups.
In forests, researchers can use remote sensing data like satellite images and possibly verify those data with information on the ground. For soils, scientists must measure the carbon content of a particular soil at a specific location and develop a map from that.
The science of soil carbon dynamics is evolving, with some researchers finding that soil could even play a role in boosting greenhouse gas emissions (ClimateWire, July 14, 2011).
Nevertheless, Crooks believes that the low profile of blue carbon shouldn't be attributed to technical challenges.
"It's not that it's difficult; it's that everyone is focused on the forest," he said. There are few methods to quantify blue carbon, and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has barely mentioned it in its reports.
Efforts to raise blue carbon's awareness are mounting. Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature have developed the Blue Carbon Policy Framework, with the objective to integrate blue carbon activities into the policy and financial work of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees international work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The World Bank is also looking to enrich its carbon investments with coastal wetland projects.
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14 Comments
Add CommentDon't forget the huge benefit of protecting coastal lands from storms. Mangroves can serve to help mitigate sea level rises and inland flooding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a good idea independant of any global warming is the next armegeddon nonsense. This is what I mean by you warmists and your ideology. Restoring mangroves is a good idea independant of any so called CO2 offset. So why sit there and use your fabricated CO2 estimates on how much is offset and put it in terms of only CO2?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the benefits together from these mangroves being restored probably makes it less than your CO2 numbers.
My solar panels have the same ridiculous CO2 savings numbers. So far in July I have supposedly "saved" 3000 lbs of CO2, I just dont buy it but then I did not get solar panels because of any belief I would be affecting CO2 anyway, I am just demonstrating a personal example of doing something useful, like using my panels so my indirect burning of coal does not add any extra heat, which is where any human caused warming is coming from( our heat production) and of course reducing all kinds of pollutants from coal. No where was reducing CO2 to reverse global warming part of my decision to buy panels and restoring mangroves should have more reasons than the half scam CO2 nonsense as predicted by flawed computer models.
@priddseren, we get it, you're an idiot. You don't have to keep on slamming the point home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese places also act a breeding sites for a multitude of fish, shrimps and other edible animals, the practice of respecting sections of mangrove in places transformed for intensive shrimp breeding allowed a very good conservation and supply of food for shrimps, and establishing no fishing sanctuaries alternating with strips where fishing is allowed also prevented exhaustion of traditional fishing places that were reducing year after year its yield. Even more, when people involved in traditional fishing perceives the benefit of sanctuaries, the needs for any kind of reinforcement of the regulations about free fishing areas and forbidden to fishing ones is reduced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDenialists' rants aside, presrving and, better yet, restoring mangroves protect coastlines, and act as breeding grounds of counless aquatic species that are suffering from the lack of these areas as much as they do from overfishing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, only CO2 capture schemes have economic value, right? Preserving a wild environment does not put money in corps' or politicians' pockets so that approach is not worth pursuing...
You have a point there, the politicians can tax, scam and scheme to obtain money and power for themselves in taxes or in the green corporations the politicians own with nonsense like CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe politicians need CO2 for their scams, too bad they wont either spend the money they pillage on something like mangroves or get out of the way so someone else could do it.
Great, the primary defense of the warmists, just declare the other guy an idiot, so you don't have to look at your own ridiculous computer generated prophecies. You do realize the ridiculous concepts in bibles and other holy books are defended the same way. Look at the idiot claiming this flawed holy book could be wrong, works well with look at the idiot who claims the flawed computer models could be wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice positive way to pose this .. as it is of course really a massive problem: there always were mangrove forests, and they are now being degraded, which causes great loss to the ecosystem, and also frees up large amounts of CO2 that was being stored in the mud, before. But of course this is one of those 'no brainer' things we need to do: start protecting these mangroves in stead of ruining them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@priddseren, you're an idiot because you post the same B.S. here over and over again, even though it has been well refuted over and over again. Climate science is not only based on models and you know that. But, because you are fundamentally irrational, you continue to use strawman fallacies to advance your agenda. So, yes, I am attacking you because you are the problem. Your inability to accept the facts and instead lie and distort the truth in order to hold on to your delusions. You're the problem, not the models, not the science, just you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsaiah 30:26 predicts a solar storm at this time period. 700 % for 7 days. Less than 5 months away. Dec 2012 .21 looks reasonable at this time. Nostradamus and the crop circles back up the prediction. Not to worry ....millions should survive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComputer models are used to defend the Bible?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Mangrove forests ... have the potential to store about 2.5 times as much CO2 as humans produce globally each year."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat seems like an extreme claim. Does anyone know where this estimate comes from?
Restore? What percent is lost and exactly 'where' will it be restored?We shouldn't be destroying one ecosystem with another.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI doubt if folks in Asia, etc. living along former natural nangrove areas are going to want them restored anymore than folks in Los angeles want their city leveled and returned to natural desert..
The mangrove forest will be restored in the shallow waters off Africa such as eastern Egypt where nothing now lives or grows. At one time a great mangrove forest grew there, now nothing does. At one time other great mangrove forests grew in such places where nothing grows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe people in Asia, who used to be protected from ocean flooding by a mangrove forest, might not mind having such protection once again. I have not heard many of them praising Allah that their houses are soaked and they lost family members to cholera.
Why should not the people of Los Angeles get rid of their lawns as most of Arizona has done. People in Phoenix have discovered the beauty of desertscape.