U.S. States Play Major Role Boosting, Expanding ‘Blue Carbon’

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally will require a multifaceted approach. Conserving, restoring, and managing natural habitats such as forests, grasslands, and wetlands is one strategy that can help moderate emissions and slow the rate of climate change.

Coastal ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest provide essential benefits to nature and people, including serving as an important nature-based solution in the fight against climate change by sequestering significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and surrounding waters. As states seek to advance climate goals, coastal land managers increasingly need tools to help them understand the carbon storage potential within the coastal zone. Oregon has been a leader in these efforts, developing a restoration opportunity inventory map to help inform land management and climate policy and funding decisions.

Seagrasses—flowering marine plants that form dense underwater meadows—boost coastal economies and can capture and store significant amounts of climate-harming carbon, known as “blue carbon.” But they are also one of the most imperiled ecosystems on Earth, declining globally at 7% each year. Up to 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are released annually worldwide from degraded coastal ecosystems, including seagrasses—an amount equivalent to the emissions from 222 million gas-powered cars on the road for a year.

Coastal habitats in the U.S., many of which are vulnerable and declining, provide significant benefits to people, marine life, and the climate, and would benefit from comprehensive monitoring and management, according to a new white paper from Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability