Country-specific emission factor for developing a tier 3 system of Indonesia’s seagrass carbon inventory

Abstract

Climate action regarding carbon inventory requires baseline assessment, data regarding annual changes, and evaluation of reductions in carbon emissions. However, many studies of seagrass ecosystems have focused only on carbon stock and sequestration, neglecting the importance of the carbon emission factor. It is known that emission factors for land-use change, including those in seagrass ecosystems, can be derived from biomass and sediment carbon stock. Since currently Indonesia only has data for biomass carbon stock, we propose the measurement of province-based emission factors. This study combines the available carbon stock data reported in national or international publications and conducts a meta-analysis to obtain emission factor values. The results show that the biomass standing carbon stock of Indonesia’s seagrass meadows ranges from 0.30 tC/ha (i.e., Special Region of Yogyakarta) to 16.51 tC/ha (i.e., Gorontalo province), while emission factor ranges from 0.012 tC/ha/yr to 0.661 tC/ha/yr (equal to 0.05 t CO2/ha/yr to 2.42 t CO2/ha/yr). These findings will be beneficial for developing Tier 3 carbon inventory since they allow country-specific emission factor for the seagrass ecosystem to be measured.