The thin green strip of mangrove wetlands around the tropical coastlines of Australia and the world are the most carbon-rich forests on earth but they are at risk.
Professor Rod Connolly, a marine scientist from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute, is the co-author of new research that shows the vast reserves of carbon being sequestered by mangrove forests.
“This is the first comprehensive assessment of mangrove carbon stocks, country by country around the coastlines of the world”, Professor Connolly said.
Mangroves and other coastal plants use atmospheric carbon to grow. Some carbon is locked up in their trunks, branches and roots. But even more is isolated in the forest soils.
The deep muddy soils that mangroves live in provide ideal conditions for preventing decomposition of carbon and thus keeping it locked up for millennia.
A new paper, Global patterns in mangrove soil carbon stocks and losses published in the journal Nature Climate Change, identifies areas of
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