Fulton et al. (2025): Tracing Blue Carbon Flows Across Diverse Seascapes
Christopher J. Fulton, Diego R. Barneche, Kay Davis, Cal Faubel, Cecilia Pascelli, Julie Vercelloni and Shaun K. Wilson, IN: Global Change Biology, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70420
Plants occupying coastal ecosystems draw in carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air and water around them during photosynthesis. A fraction of this CO₂ becomes fixed into plant biomass and can eventually contribute to the blue carbon pool—organic carbon (Corg) sequestered in slow-turnover sinks. An important step in protecting and enhancing this natural carbon sequestration pathway is determining the relative contributions of different coastal plants to this blue carbon pool in durable sinks. The authors compiled a global dataset of coastal soil carbon measurements and used a Bayesian hierarchical meta-regression model to explore the relative contribution of local (autochthonous) versus external (allochthonous) sources of Corg in the soils beneath tidal saltmarsh, mangrove, and seagrass wetlands.