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Healthy salt marsh. In salt marshes, early ecologists like Eugene Odum and John Teal sparked the current bottom-up paradigm in ecology through work on Sapelo Island, GA (U.S.A) that stressed the dominant role of physical factors like temperature, salinity, and nutrients in regulating plant primary productivity and ecosystem structure (Teal 1962, Odum 1971).
Blue carbon is defined by the IPCC as "Biologically driven carbon fluxes and storage in marine systems that are amenable to management." [2]: 2220 Another definition states: "Blue carbon refers to organic carbon that is captured and stored by the oceans and coastal ecosystems, particularly by vegetated coastal ecosystems: seagrass meadows, tidal marshes, and mangrove forests."
Blue carbon refers to carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by the world's coastal marine ecosystems, mostly mangroves, salt marshes, seagrasses and potentially macroalgae, through plant growth and the accumulation and burial of organic matter in the sediment. [32] [33]
In coastal plant communities, such as kelp, seagrass meadows, mangrove forests and salt marshes, several studies have documented the far-reaching effects of changing predator populations. Across coastal ecosystems, the loss of marine predators appears to negatively affect coastal plant communities and the ecosystem services they provide.
Coastal blue carbon includes mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses. These make up a majority of ocean plant life and store large quantities of carbon. Deep blue carbon is located in international waters and includes carbon contained in "continental shelf waters, deep-sea waters and the sea floor beneath them". [4]
Healthy bogs sequester carbon, hold back water thereby reducing flood risk, and supply cleaned water better than degraded habitats do. Regulating services are the "benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes". [18] These include: Purification of water and air; Carbon sequestration (this contributes to climate change mitigation)
The reduction reduces the ocean's rate of carbon sequestration in the deep ocean. Each area of the ocean has a base sequestration rate on some timescale, e.g., annual. Fertilization must increase that rate, but must do so on a scale beyond the natural scale. Otherwise, fertilization changes the timing, but not the total amount sequestered.
Salt marsh dieback results in the death of marsh-specific plants and the erosion of the landscape. High salt marsh dieback, or salt marsh browning, is the primary force in salt marsh degradation in the high marsh. The general effect is that the plants in the marsh die off and brown, leaving dead organic matter, and ultimately open sediment.