Interview: What makes salt marshes such effective carbon capturers?
Ocean speaks with Dr Grace Cott from the University College Dublin's Blue Carbon group and Andrea Fuchs, an environmental scientist about why coastal wetlands are more effective than tropical forests when it comes to fighting climate change.
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00:00 [Music]
00:06 Salt marshes are really efficient at capturing carbon.
00:09 [Music]
00:14 That comes down to three main processes.
00:16 So we have the plant growth, so capturing CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
00:21 And then we have sediments coming in with the tide, which can settle out,
00:26 and this helps further bury that carbon.
00:28 And then the anoxic sediments, where there's very little oxygen,
00:31 that reduces the decomposition, which allows that carbon to remain stored for long periods of time.
00:37 And so this doesn't happen in that many environments.
00:39 It doesn't happen in some terrestrial environments, where the soils are naturally much more aerated.
00:44 They wouldn't have the same carbon stock as salt marshes.
00:47 Another advantage of salt marshes is that they don't emit as much methane,
00:52 a potential greenhouse gas, compared to freshwater wetlands,
00:56 as studies at the University College Dublin confirm.
00:59 Normally an ecosystem would also emit more methane to the atmosphere,
01:04 but because of the salinity in the seawater, the methane production is actually mitigated.
01:10 So we have less methane emission from coastal wetland plants than we have from freshwater plants.
01:15 [MUSIC]