Emerging Constraints of Carbon and Influence of Water in Regional Blue Carbon Tropical Estuarine/Coastal Hot Spots:Policies, Climate Mitigation Planning

Abstract:

Blue Carbon habitats (mangroves and seagrasses ) are known to sequester 4-5 times more carbon than tropical rain forests. Satellite mangrove extent measurements from Southeast Asia and Gulf of Mexico (GoM) excellently delineate the national and regional mangrove extent from which we have calculated (at 1 meter depth) total sequestered carbon stock for each nation or state in both regions from nationally derived sequestered carbon values. Seagrass extents from satellite plus ground-truth are defined in USA GoM states along with investigations providing excellent carbon sedimentary values; however other Southeast Asian nations or the Caribbean have far fewer defining investigations of seagrass extent or sequestered carbon. These two regions are shown to contain the greatest combined tropical mangrove/ seagrass habitats from the imperfect satellite extent studies for the seagrass. High levels of anthropogenic habitat destruction continue in both regions. Each of these regions’ blue carbon habitats have lost minimally 20,000+ Km2.The carbon stock found shows high specificity as to oceanic waters’ dissolved carbon dioxide flow. Constraints to developing accurate regional estimates of these “Hot spots” include paucity of carbon information beyond 1 m depth, poorly defined carbon in a series of these regions’ nations seagrass extent, plus poorly investigated carbon stock configurations across national estuarine transition zones plus across regional transition zones. National preservation and mitigation policies differ widely within each nation of the two regional “Hot spots”. For example, few nations have “mitigation of anthropogenic damages” or national planning for climate mitigation policies. Only 3 nations have national plans. Ocean waters’ role in dissolved carbon abundance of blue carbon buried in these “Hot-spots” will be discussed, as will solutions for climate mitigation through extensive revegetation, and policies and plans required to arrive at blue carbon balances nationally.