Logo image
Back
The climate benefit of seagrass blue carbon is reduced by methane fluxes and enhanced by nitrous oxide fluxes
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The climate benefit of seagrass blue carbon is reduced by methane fluxes and enhanced by nitrous oxide fluxes

Bradley D. Eyre, Nicola Camillini, Ronnie N. Glud and Judith A. Rosentreter
Communications earth & environment, Vol.4, 374
13/10/2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01022-x
pdf
The climate benefit of seagrass blue carbon is reduced by methane fluxes and enhanced by nitrous oxide fluxes950.23 kBDownloadView
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0,  Open Access
url
The climate benefit of seagrass blue carbon is reduced by methane fluxes and enhanced by nitrous oxide fluxesView
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Related links

Metrics

2 File views/ downloads
104 Record Views
30 Times Cited - Web of Science

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#13 Climate Action
#14 Life Below Water

Source: InCites

Abstract

Carbon cycle
Blue carbon is carbon stored long-term in vegetated coastal ecosystems, which constitutes an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). However, because methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have higher global warming potentials (GWP) than CO2, their production and release during organic matter diagenesis can affect the climate benefit of blue carbon. Here, we present a meta-analysis synthesizing seagrass CH4 and N2O fluxes and long-term organic carbon burial rates, and use these data to estimate the reduced climate benefit (offsets) of seagrass blue carbon using three upscaling approaches. Mean offsets for individual seagrass species (34.7% GWP20;1.0% GWP100) and globally (33.4% GWP20;7.0% GWP100) were similar, but GWP20 offsets were higher, and GWP100 offsets were lower than globally, for the Australian region (41.3% GWP20;1.1% GWP100). This study highlights the importance of using long-term organic carbon burial rates and accounting for both CH4 and N2O fluxes in future seagrass blue carbon assessments.

Details

Logo image