A Spatial Baseline of China's Blue Carbon Stocks for Improved Monitoring, Management, and Protection

A Spatial Baseline of China's Blue Carbon Stocks for Improved Monitoring, Management, and Protection

Abstract Blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) exhibit remarkable capacities for organic carbon (C) storage, making them a promising nature‐based climate solution. However, the lack of robust, spatially explicit estimates of C stocks in BCEs presents a major challenge to incorporating them into national and...

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Main Authors: Shaobo Sun, Zhaoliang Song, Laodong Guo, Carlos M. Duarte, Peter I. Macreadie, Zhen Zhang, Yunying Fang, Baozhang Chen, Zhengang Wang, Weiqi Wang, Yidong Wang, Dongjie Fu, Yuan Li, Yafei Wang, Hailong Wang, Cong‐Qiang Liu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2025-05-01
Series:Earth's Future
Subjects:
coastal wetlands
blue carbon
mangroves
salt marshes
tidal flats
seagrasses
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EF005380
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Summary:Abstract Blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) exhibit remarkable capacities for organic carbon (C) storage, making them a promising nature‐based climate solution. However, the lack of robust, spatially explicit estimates of C stocks in BCEs presents a major challenge to incorporating them into national and global C accounting and climate mitigation strategies. For the first time, we develop spatially explicit estimates of both soil and living biomass C stocks in BCEs across China by integrating open‐access remote sensing, climate, and soil property data with 2,899 site measurements using a data‐driven method. Our C stock estimates reveal that mean C stocks in BCEs significantly decrease with increasing latitude. We estimate the total C storage within China's BCEs at 121.1 ± 48.4 Tg C, with soil accounting for 90% of the total C storage. Tidal marshes and flats contribute a total of 64.7 ± 8.7 Tg C, while mangroves store a much smaller amount (4.4 ± 1.4 Tg C) due to their limited spatial extent. Seagrasses store a total of 52.0 ± 38.3 Tg C, which is significantly larger than previous estimates. These findings underscore the significant potential of BCEs protection and restoration for China's climate mitigation efforts. Our spatially explicit C stock estimates for China's BCEs provide essential data for national and global C accounting and can serve as baselines for quantifying the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on BCEs C stocks. Additionally, this study offers a practical framework for comprehensively assessing C stocks in BCEs at the national scale.
ISSN:2328-4277

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