Accurately Valuing Blue Carbon Sequestration and Storage to Foster Coastal Conservation via Evidence-Based Policymaking and Model Environmental Services Statute Methodologies

Abstract

Blue carbon ecosystems, especially mangrove forests, provide one of nature’s most effective means for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in subsurface soils. The six nearshore coastal morphologies found in tropical and subtropical regions each possess a conspicuous environmental signature that can be employed to accurately estimate and predict mangrove forests’ carbon storage in above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, and the soils by system type. The consistent geomorphology and geophysical processes within each of these coastal environmental settings, that is, the wave and tidal forcings, the rate of coastal sediment accretions, nutrient load and limitations (e.g., nitrogen-to-phosphorus stoichiometric ratio), organic matter diagenesis, and carbon storage, have been shown to be largely consistent by system type such that more accurate rates of blue carbon sequestration and storage can be quantified. Thus, the first objective of this study is to promote coastal conservation and preservation by determining accurate soil carbon stocks, densities, and accretion rates of each country by employing this coastal environmental settings methodology.