CLIMATE CHANGE AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION - Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know - page 182

is much discussion about planting more trees and restoring
rain forests, seagrasses and mangroves fix carbon at a much
higher rate than land-based systems and could be an approach
to climate mitigation (known as “blue carbon”), which also
preserves the important ecosystem services of these habi-
tats. Because these approaches are long-term, expensive, and
unlikely to be enacted soon, Washington State has decided
to try to buy time for itself. They will monitor ocean acid-
ity carefully and create an acidity budget—an assessment of
how much acidity is coming from which sources. Then it will
attempt to reduce carbon inputs from land-based sources such
as agricultural and urban runoff. They will also develop prac-
tical steps to offset carbon, like planting seagrasses. They will
include an extensive campaign to educate the public, business
leaders, and policymakers about the risks of increasing OA.
There are many efforts underway internationally to restore
and plant new salt marshes and seagrasses not only as buffers
for climate change, but for the habitat they provide for marine
animals and the shore protection they provide to human com-
munities. There are also efforts underway to restore damaged
coral reefs. These projects are very labor intensive, involv-
ing growing small pieces of coral in the laboratory and then
cementing them in place on a reef. Restoring oyster reefs
has become very popular in the United States for a number
of reasons. The oyster reefs provide habitat for a wide vari-
ety of other animals, the reefs serve as a buffer against storm
surges, and their calcium-containing shells can help to coun-
teract decreasing pH. In addition, oysters filter huge amounts
of water and can help to combat eutrophication by eating a lot
of phytoplankton.
Geoengineering technologies—technical fixes—can play a
role in tackling climate change. Iron fertilization is one that
has actually been tried in order to increase CO 2 uptake from
the atmosphere into the ocean. In areas where the growth
of phytoplankton is limited by low availability of iron, extra
iron is added. This stimulates plant growth, increasing