ORCID

0000-0002-8859-7096 (Burdige), 0000-0003-2422-3252 (Tamborski)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-44037-w

Publication Title

Nature Communications

Volume

14

Issue

1

Pages

8196 (1-8)

Abstract

Mangroves and saltmarshes are biogeochemical hotspots storing carbon in sediments and in the ocean following lateral carbon export (outwelling). Coastal seawater pH is modified by both uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide and natural biogeochemical processes, e.g., wetland inputs. Here, we investigate how mangroves and saltmarshes influence coastal carbonate chemistry and quantify the contribution of alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) outwelling to blue carbon budgets. Observations from 45 mangroves and 16 saltmarshes worldwide revealed that >70% of intertidal wetlands export more DIC than alkalinity, potentially decreasing the pH of coastal waters. Porewater-derived DIC outwelling (81 ± 47 mmol m−2d−1 in mangroves and 57 ± 104 mmol m−2d−1 in saltmarshes) was the major term in blue carbon budgets. However, substantial amounts of fixed carbon remain unaccounted for. Concurrently, alkalinity outwelling was similar or higher than sediment carbon burial and is therefore a significant but often overlooked carbon sequestration mechanism.

Rights

© The Authors 2023.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Original Publication Citation

Reithmaier, G. M. S., Cabral, A., Akhand, A., Bogard, M. J., Borges, A. V., Bouillon, S., Burdige, D. J., Call, M., Chen, N., Chen, X., Cotovicz, L. C., Jr., Eagle, M. J., Kristensen, E., Kroeger, K. D., Lu, Z., Maher, D. T., Pérez-Lloréns, J. L., Ray, R., Taillardat, P., . . . Santos, I. R. (2023). Carbonate chemistry and carbon sequestration driven by inorganic carbon outwelling from mangroves and saltmarshes. Nature Communications, 14(1), 1-8, Article 8196. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44037-w

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