Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Road Map to Expand Blue Carbon
Reservoir
…
For achieving a successful conservation.
Human beings must have certain reservation
…
The Authors
c conservation of coastal vegeta-
tion and other biotic reservoir requires a detailed
knowledge of their (i) status, (ii) threats and (iii)
scienti
The scienti
8.1
Conservation Approach
c management. Several literatures avail-
able on the latest status do not give a compre-
hensive picture on global basis; rather, many
studies are conducted at extremely local level or
regional level. A basic background on blue car-
bon is depicted in this chapter that can serve as a
backbone to formulate a policy to conserve this
valuable domain of the planet.
Coastal vegetations are ef
cient carbon sinks that
sequester and store large quantum of carbon in
their biomass (above- and below-ground biomass)
and underlying sediments for a considerable long
period of time. The carbon sequestration capacity
of mangroves, seagrass beds, tidal marshes and
other marine and coastal vegetated ecosystems has
been a focus of considerable attention in recent
times, and the carbon stored in their biomass and
sediments is coined as
(Nelleman
et al.
2009
; Gordon et al.
2011
; Pendleton
et al.
2012
). Blue carbon has been more formally
de
'
blue carbon
'
8.1.1 Status
Blue carbon habitats are distributed globally and
are concentrated in the coastal regions. Some
important
the carbon stored, sequestered or
released from coastal ecosystems of tidal marshes,
mangroves
ned as
'
gures on the storage capacity of car-
bon dioxide by coastal vegetation are highlighted
below.
1. Mangroves are among the most carbon-rich
habitats in the tropics, storing as much as
3,100
(Herr
et al.
2012
). The exact amount of carbon stored by
coastal vegetated ecosystems is still an active area
of research (Pendleton et al.
2012
). Many biotic
components of coastal ecosystems like phyto-
plankton, bivalves and gastropods also store car-
bon in their biomass, but very few literatures
re
and
seagrass meadows
'
4,400 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide
equivalent per hectare (CO
2
e/ha) in their bio-
mass and soils (Donato et al.
2011
). Several
articles published on mangrove carbon, how-
ever, exhibit different
-
ect their storage potential. The readers may get
detail information on these gap areas from Chaps.
several researches, articles and books, however,
suggests that coastal ecosystems are among the
most intense carbon sinks on the planet Earth
(Nellemann et al.
2009
). It is therefore extremely
essential to conserve and expand the horizon of
blue carbon reservoir for the sake of human civi-
lization and sustain an equilibrium climatic
condition.
fl
gures in the context of
storage. Chmura et al. (
2003
) found that the
average carbon density of mangroves equals
55,000 g/m
3
(2,016.67 metric tonnes CO
2
e/
ha per metre depth). Ong (
2002
) estimated that
sediments in mangrove forests held 700 tonnes
of carbon per metre depth per hectare.
2. The storage capacity of salt marshes and
seagrasses is less than that of mangroves. On
