| 1. |
- Duffy, J. Emmett, et al.
(författare)
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Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae
- 2019
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Marine Science. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2296-7745. ; 6
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- In coastal waters around the world, the dominant primary producers are benthic macrophytes, including seagrasses and macroalgae, that provide habitat structure and food for diverse and abundant biological communities and drive ecosystem processes. Seagrass meadows and macroalgal forests play key roles for coastal societies, contributing to fishery yields, storm protection, biogeochemical cycling and storage, and important cultural values. These socio-economically valuable services are threatened worldwide by human activities, with substantial areas of seagrass and macroalgal forests lost over the last half-century. Tracking the status and trends in marine macrophyte cover and quality is an emerging priority for ocean and coastal management, but doing so has been challenged by limited coordination across the numerous efforts to monitor macrophytes, which vary widely in goals, methodologies, scales, capacity, governance approaches, and data availability. Here, we present a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of and opportunities for advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community of researchers with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise. With the increasing scale of human impacts, the time is ripe to harmonize marine macrophyte observations by building on existing networks and identifying a core set of common metrics and approaches in sampling design, field measurements, governance, capacity building, and data management. We recommend a tiered observation system, with improvement of remote sensing and remote underwater imaging to expand capacity to capture broad-scale extent at intervals of several years, coordinated with strati fied in situ sampling annually to characterize the key variables of cover and taxonomic or functional group composition, and to provide ground-truth. A robust networked system of macrophyte observations will be facilitated by establishing best practices, including standard protocols, documentation, and sharing of resources at all stages of work flow, and secure archiving of open-access data. Because such a network is necessarily distributed, sustaining it depends on close engagement of local stakeholders and focusing on building and long-term maintenance of local capacity, particularly in the developing world. Realizing these recommendations will producemore effective, efficient, and responsive observing, a more accurate global picture of change in vegetated coastal systems, and stronger international capacity for sustaining observations.
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| 2. |
- James, Kelly, et al.
(författare)
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It's time to broaden what we consider a 'blue carbon ecosystem'
- 2024
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 30:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photoautotrophic marine ecosystems can lock up organic carbon in their biomass and the associated organic sediments they trap over millennia and are thus regarded as blue carbon ecosystems. Because of the ability of marine ecosystems to lock up organic carbon for millennia, blue carbon is receiving much attention within the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a nature-based solution (NBS) to climate change, but classically still focuses on seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and tidal marshes. However, other coastal ecosystems could also be important for blue carbon storage, but remain largely neglected in both carbon cycling budgets and NBS strategic planning. Using a meta-analysis of 253 research publications, we identify other coastal ecosystems—including mud flats, fjords, coralline algal (rhodolith) beds, and some components or coral reef systems—with a strong capacity to act as blue carbon sinks in certain situations. Features that promote blue carbon burial within these ‘non-classical’ blue carbon ecosystems included: (1) balancing of carbon release by calcification via carbon uptake at the individual and ecosystem levels; (2) high rates of allochthonous organic carbon supply because of high particle trapping capacity; (3) high rates of carbon preservation and low remineralization rates; and (4) location in depositional environments. Some of these features are context-dependent, meaning that these ecosystems were blue carbon sinks in some locations, but not others. Therefore, we provide a universal framework that can evaluate the likelihood of a given ecosystem to behave as a blue carbon sink for a given context. Overall, this paper seeks to encourage consideration of non-classical blue carbon ecosystems within NBS strategies, allowing more complete blue carbon accounting.
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| 3. |
- Maxwell, Tania L., et al.
(författare)
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Global dataset of soil organic carbon in tidal marshes
- 2023
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Ingår i: Scientific Data. - : Springer Nature. - 2052-4463. ; 10:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tidal marshes store large amounts of organic carbon in their soils. Field data quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks provide an important resource for researchers, natural resource managers, and policy-makers working towards the protection, restoration, and valuation of these ecosystems. We collated a global dataset of tidal marsh soil organic carbon (MarSOC) from 99 studies that includes location, soil depth, site name, dry bulk density, SOC, and/or soil organic matter (SOM). The MarSOC dataset includes 17,454 data points from 2,329 unique locations, and 29 countries. We generated a general transfer function for the conversion of SOM to SOC. Using this data we estimated a median (± median absolute deviation) value of 79.2 ± 38.1 Mg SOC ha−1 in the top 30 cm and 231 ± 134 Mg SOC ha−1 in the top 1 m of tidal marsh soils globally. This data can serve as a basis for future work, and may contribute to incorporation of tidal marsh ecosystems into climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies.
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