“Blue Carbon” benefits of natural infrastructure: One more reason to love the coast!

Background/Question/Methods

Several recent scientific studies have demonstrated significant amounts of carbon sequestered and stored in coastal wetlands, specifically mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows, and this carbon is referred to as “blue carbon.”  Coastal wetlands have unique characteristics that make them incredibly efficient, natural carbon sinks with most carbon stored belowground in soils.  These blue carbon benefits are now beginning to be recognized in the policy world leading to a growing interest in leveraging the climate-change-mitigating carbon services of these habitats to develop new policy opportunities to protect and restore coastal wetlands around the globe.  Here we explore both U.S. and international existing or emerging policy opportunities related to blue carbon, climate mitigation and adaptation, and coastal conservation.  We ask, “What are the most promising opportunities for utilizing the blue carbon services of coastal ecosystems with the goal of increasing climate mitigation and/or adaptation, and coastal conservation?”

Results/Conclusions

We determined there are a number of promising blue carbon policy opportunities emerging at different scale.  We specifically highlight: (1) U.S. federal policies that do or can include carbon services of ecosystems in order to improve management and decision making including links to resilience efforts; (2) international climate policy efforts related to blue carbon as well as the developing North American blue carbon community of science and practice; and (3) innovative financing mechanisms for coastal conservation including carbon market credits for wetlands.  We also determined, however, that in order to support all of these developing policy opportunities, there are critical scientific gaps in our understanding of blue carbon ecosystem dynamics that need to be filled.  We present the most pressing of these research needs in a call for multidisciplinary blue carbon science to support policy.