Coastal Blue Carbon: Methods for assessing carbon stocks and emissions factors in mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrass meadows

Coastal ecosystems are critical to maintaining human well-being and global biodiversity. Mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrasses sequester and store significant amounts of coastal blue carbon from the atmosphere and ocean and are now recognized for their role in mitigating climate change. Conservation and restoration of these coastal ecosystems has been increasingly addressed in international and national climate change mitigation policy and finance mechanisms.

The International Blue Carbon Initiative’s team of 34 experts in the fields of coastal carbon measurement, remote sensing, and climate policy produced this manual with the goal standardizing protocols for sampling methods, laboratory measurements, and analysis of blue carbon stocks and fluxes. The manual will provide scientists and coastal managers with a practical tool to produce robust blue carbon data.

We hope that the data produced inspires and enables natural resource professionals and other decision makers to take action to conserve coastal ecosystems, and their diverse ecosystem functions.

Contents

• Chapter 1 – Why Measure Carbon Stocks

• Chapter 2 – Conceptualizing the Project and Developing a Field Measurement Plan

• Chapter 3 – Field Sampling of Soil Carbon Pools in Coastal Ecosystems

• Chapter 4 – Field Sampling of Vegetative Carbon Pools in Coastal Ecosystems

• Chapter 5 – How to Estimate Carbon Dioxide Emissions

• Chapter 6 – Remote Sensing and Mapping

• Chapter 7 – Data Management Appendices References