Sequestration of macroalgal carbon: the elephant in the Blue Carbon room
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Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionMarine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Date
2018-06-20Online Publication Date
2018-06-20Print Publication Date
2018-06-30Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/631530
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Macroalgae form the most extensive and productive benthic marine vegetated habitats globally but their inclusion in Blue Carbon (BC) strategies remains controversial. We review the arguments offered to reject or include macroalgae in the BC framework, and identify the challenges that have precluded macroalgae from being incorporated so far. Evidence that macroalgae support significant carbon burial is compelling. The carbon they supply to sediment stocks in angiosperm BC habitats is already included in current assessments, so that macroalgae are de facto recognized as important donors of BC. The key challenges are (i) documenting macroalgal carbon sequestered beyond BC habitat, (ii) tracing it back to source habitats, and (iii) showing that management actions at the habitat lead to increased sequestration at the sink site. These challenges apply equally to carbon exported from BC coastal habitats. Because of the large carbon sink they support, incorporation of macroalgae into BC accounting and actions is an imperative. This requires a paradigm shift in accounting procedures as well as developing methods to enable the capacity to trace carbon from donor to sink habitats in the ocean.Citation
Krause-Jensen D, Lavery P, Serrano O, Marbà N, Masque P, et al. (2018) Sequestration of macroalgal carbon: the elephant in the Blue Carbon room. Biology Letters 14: 20180236. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0236.Sponsors
ECU is thanked for funding and hosting a workshop (February 2018) where the paper was drafted. D.K.-J. thanks the Independent Research Fund Denmark (8021-00222B, 'CARMA') for support. O.S. was supported by an ARC DECRA DE170101524. P.M. was supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya (grant no. 2017SGR1588). This work contributes to the ICTA 'Unit of Excellence' (MinECo, MFM2015-0552).Publisher
The Royal SocietyJournal
Biology LettersAdditional Links
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0236Relations
Is Supplemented By:- [Dataset]
Krause-Jensen, D., Lavery, P., Serrano, O., Marbà, N., Masque, P., & Duarte, C. M. (2018). Supplementary material from "Sequestration of macroalgal carbon: the elephant in the Blue Carbon room". Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.C.4137932.V1. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4137932.v1 Handle: 10754/664623
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1098/rsbl.2018.0236
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.