A recent NOAA study, published in the journal PLOS One, shows “living shorelines”—protected and stabilized shorelines using natural materials such as plants, sand, and rock—can help to keep carbon out of the atmosphere, helping to blunt the effects of climate change.
This study, the first of its kind, measured carbon storing, or “carbon sequestration,” in the coastal wetlands and the narrow, fringing marshes of living shorelines in North Carolina.
“Shoreline management techniques like this can help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while increasing coastal resilience,” said Russell Callender, Ph.D., acting director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “As communities around the country become more vulnerable to natural disasters and long-term adverse environmental change, scientific research such as this helps people, communities, businesses, and governments better understand risk and develop solutions to mitigate impacts.”
Carbon can be stored or “sequestered” in plants when they take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. The carbon sequestered and subsequently stored in coastal wetland sediments is known as “coastal blue carbon.” Acre for acre, salt marsh meadows can store two to three times as much carbon of the course of a year as mature tropical forests.
NOAA has supported blue carbon policy and science efforts for several years, with a growing interest in creating and managing coastal wetlands as carbon sinks. NOAA recently announced guidance on the use of verified carbon standards for the creation and restoration of coastal wetlands.
“Research hadn’t focused on whether these narrow strips of fringing marshes could store carbon,” said Jenny Davis, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and scientist with NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS). “But now we know that the added carbon storage benefit of these marshes as part of living shorelines can improve coastal resilience.”
NOAA study finds ‘living shorelines’ can lessen climate change’s effects
Protected and stabilized shorelines can store carbon, promote coastal resilience, improve water quality, and fish habitats
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