Smeaton, C., Garrett, E., Koot, M.B. et al. (9 more authors) (2024) Organic carbon accumulation in British saltmarshes. Science of The Total Environment, 926. 172104. ISSN 0048-9697
Abstract
Saltmarshes are a crucial component of the coastal carbon (C) system and provide a natural climate regulation service through the accumulation and long-term storage of organic carbon (OC) in their soils. These coastal ecosystems are under growing pressure from a changing climate and increasing anthropogenic disturbance. To manage and protect these ecosystems for C and to allow their inclusion in emissions and natural-capital accounting, as well as carbon markets, accurate and reliable estimates of OC accumulation are required. However, globally, such data are rare or of varying quality. Here, we quantify sedimentation rates and OC densities for 21 saltmarshes in Great Britain (GB). We estimate that, on average, saltmarshes accumulate OC at a rate of 110.88 ± 43.12 g C m−2 yr−1. This is considerably less than widely applied global saltmarsh averages. It is therefore highly likely that the contribution of northern European saltmarshes to global saltmarsh OC accumulation has been significantly overestimated. Taking account of the climatic, geomorphological, oceanographic, and ecological characteristics of all GB saltmarshes and the areal extent of different saltmarsh zones, we estimate that the 451.65 km2 of GB saltmarsh accumulates 46,563 ± 4353 t of OC annually. These low OC accumulation rates underline the importance of the 5.20 ± 0.65 million tonnes of OC already stored in these vulnerable coastal ecosystems. Going forward the protection and preservation of the existing stores of OC in GB saltmarshes must be a priority for the UK as this will provide climate benefits through avoided emissions several times more significant than the annual accumulation of OC in these ecosystems.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Coastal; Blue carbon; Wetlands; Radionuclide; Climate; Nature-based solutions |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/R010846/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Apr 2024 11:03 |
Last Modified: | 05 Apr 2024 11:03 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172104 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:211139 |