Carbon Cycling in Mangrove Ecosystem of Western Bay of Bengal (India)

Kakoli Banerjee,Abhijit Mitra,Sebastián Villasante

doi:10.3390/su13126740

Abstract

Carbon cycling in the mangrove ecosystem is one of the important processes determining the potential of coastal vegetation (mangroves), sediment, and adjoining waters to carbon absorption. This paper investigates the carbon storage capacity of five dominant mangrove species (Avicenia marina, Avicenia officinalis, Excoecaria agallocha, Rhizophora mucronata, and Xylocarpous granatum) on the east coast of the Indian mangrove along with the role they play in the carbon cycling phenomenon. Soil and water parameters were analyzed simultaneously with Above Ground Biomass (AGB) and Above Ground Carbon (AGC) values for 10 selected stations along. The total carbon (TC) calculated from the study area varied from 51.35 ± 6.77 to 322.47 ± 110.79 tons per hectare with a mean total carbon of 117.89 ± 28.90 and 432.64 ± 106.05 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). The alarm of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for reducing carbon emissions has been addressed by calculating the amount of carbon stored in biotic (mangroves) and abiotic (soil and water) compartments. This paper focuses on the technical investigations on the factors that control the carbon cycling process in mangroves. This blue carbon will help policymakers to develop a sustainable relationship between marine resource management and coastal inhabitants so that carbon trading markets can be developed, and the ecosystem is balanced.

Highlights

Mangrove forests make a versatile depository for low-cost climate mitigation scenarios owing to their special adaptation [1]
The present paper focuses on the carbon cycling in the bottom-top approach from sediment to seawater, mangroves, and to the atmosphere by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed and stored by the mangroves along with its sediment and adjoining seawater in the western Bay of Bengal
The present research has tried to document the carbon storage capacity of adjacent seawater, soil, and selected mangroves in the study area and, in turn, calculating carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 e) for understanding the amount of CO2 that is being absorbed from the atmosphere, thereby trying to establish the carbon cycle

Summary

Introduction

Mangrove forests make a versatile depository for low-cost climate mitigation scenarios owing to their special adaptation [1]. Mangroves are unique halophytic vegetation (tree or shrub) that grows in tropical and subtropical regions, >1 m in elevation above MSL [2]. Considering the world’s forest status, mangroves constitute about 0.7% and 0.1% of tropical forest and total forest area respectively [3] with America 11%, Africa 20%, and Asia 42%, respectively. The maximum number of the true mangrove species are confined to the Southeast Asian region [4,5]. Previous studies have reported globally for the potential carbon sequestration property of mangroves to be 1.8 × tCyr−1 and that of soil carbon to be 1.023 × tCm−2 [3], considering the depth of 3 m for SE Asia

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Results

Conclusion