Coastal ecosystems are a natural storehouse for carbon, with policymakers looking to bays, marshes, and seaside forests as nature-based solutions to help combat climate change.
Coastal ecosystems are a natural storehouse for carbon, with policymakers looking to bays, marshes, and seaside forests as nature-based solutions to help combat climate change. But the capacity of these ecosystems to take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere depends on diverse and often conflicting factors, including sediment supply, coastal slope, tidal range, wave climate, and changes in sea level.
A recent study in Nature Communications from researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science uses their newly developed computer model to better understand the modes and longevity of coastal carbon storage. In a key advance, the model simulates how carbon moves among coastal ecosystems as rising seas cause their boundaries and relative sizes to shift. Previous studies of coastal or “blue” carbon have largely focused on its fate within single, static habitats.
Read more at: Virginia Institute of Marine Science
VIMS graduate student Alex Smith traverses the salt marsh component of a coastal ecosystem, with bay and seaside-forest components visible in the background. Research modeling all three components shows carbon storage in coastal systems increases at moderate rates of sea-level rise but decreases if rise rates get too fast. (Photo Credit: K. Valentine/VIMS.)
