Journal
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
Volume 27, Issue 14, Pages 3257-3271Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15642
Keywords
blue carbon; climate change; coastal wetlands; mangroves; seagrass meadows; soil carbon stocks; tidal marshes
Funding
- Queensland Government
- Deakin University
- The University of Queensland
- James Cook University
- CSIRO
- HSBC
- Qantas
- Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources
- NQ Dry Tropics
- Great Barrier Reef Foundation
- ARC Linkage grant [LP160100492, LP160100242]
- Australian Government National Environment Science Program (Tropical Water Quality Hub)
- Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship, Queensland Government
- ECU Higher Degree by Research Scholarship
- Greencollar
- Australian Research Council [LP160100492, LP160100242] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
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This study estimated soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and their drivers in the coastal wetlands of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments for the first time, finding that climatic variables contributed significantly to SOC stocks in mangroves while soil type played a key role in seagrass meadows. The total SOC stock in the GBR catchments was approximately 137 Tg C, representing a small percentage of both Australia's and global SOC stocks, with potential carbon gains due to landward migration resulting from projected sea level rise.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments include some of the world's most intact coastal wetlands comprising diverse mangrove, seagrass and tidal marsh ecosystems. Although these ecosystems are highly efficient at storing carbon in marine sediments, their soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and the potential changes resulting from climate impacts, including sea level rise are not well understood. For the first time, we estimated SOC stocks and their drivers within the range of coastal wetlands of GBR catchments using boosted regression trees (i.e. a machine learning approach and ensemble method for modelling the relationship between response and explanatory variables) and identified the potential changes in future stocks due to sea level rise. We found levels of SOC stocks of mangrove and seagrass meadows have different drivers, with climatic variables such as temperature, rainfall and solar radiation, showing significant contributions in accounting for variation in SOC stocks in mangroves. In contrast, soil type accounted for most of the variability in seagrass meadows. Total SOC stock in the GBR catchments, including mangroves, seagrass meadows and tidal marshes, is approximately 137 Tg C, which represents 9%-13% of Australia's total SOC stock while encompassing only 4%-6% of the total extent of Australian coastal wetlands. In a global context, this could represent 0.5%-1.4% of global SOC stock. Our study suggests that landward migration due to projected sea level rise has the potential to enhance carbon accumulation with total carbon gains between 0.16 and 0.46 Tg C and provides an opportunity for future restoration to enhance blue carbon.
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