- Mangroves are extremely carbon-rich tropical forests, and have an important global role in sequestering and storing carbon.
- “Duarte and Cebrián (1) showed that mangroves allocate ca. 40% of their net primary productivity (NPP) to excess photosynthetic carbon that is either exported to lagoon and ocean waters or stored underground.” (1)
- “the soils of mangrove swamps account for the majority (71-98%) of total carbon storage in estuarine systems.” (1)
- “With only 0.49% of the total area, the mangroves around the Gulf of California store 18% of the total belowground carbon pool of the whole region.” (5)
- Mangroves that accumulate peat over time as a response to water level increases tend to store more carbon than those that only accumulate non-organic muck.
- “mangroves located in desert and dry-land coasts can store comparable, and often higher, quantities of belowground carbon than their tropical counterparts, contributing disproportionately to the desert carbon pool.” (4)
- Comparing the age of mangroves to the depth of their peat gives an estimate of the historic rate of sea-level change in the area
- “The presence of large amounts of mangrove peat in the rocky bays of the Gulf of California opens many possibilities for studying in detail the patterns of sea-level rise in the region.” (4)
- Mangroves in deserts and dry-land coasts have the ability to sequester comparable or greater carbon than those in tropical areas. Different coastal environments and topographical features may also affect the ability of mangroves in those areas to store carbon.
- Mangroves and salty scrubs combined store approximately 28% of carbon around the Gulf of California