A new team is using big data to change how the world calculates its carbon budget on the coasts
by Kristen Minogue
There’s a gaping hole in Earth’s carbon budget. Scientists have known about it for years, but the data to balance the books have proven hard to find. The blank line is for coastal wetlands—ecosystems that could protect us not only from climate change, but hurricanes, pollution and a host of other environmental hazards.
“When we think of carbon storage or natural climate solutions, a lot of the time forests and trees come to mind,” said David Klinges, a research technician at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). “Because trees have a lot of mass, they store a lot of carbon. But what is not as publicly recognized is that soils—and other forms of plants besides trees—they also store carbon.”
Coastal wetlands have an especially good reputation as carbon-storing juggernauts. They can build new soil even as seas rise. And those soils, often loaded with carbon compounds, immediately find themselves buried under oxygen-starved saltwater, where their carbon can’t escape.
“It gets refrigerated and pickled all at once,” explained SERC research associate James Holmquist.
Knowing exactly how much carbon wetlands store could transform how countries solve climate change. If only we had enough data.
Holmquist and Klinges are spearheading an effort to find that data. Called the Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network, they’re calling on scientists from Conservation International, the U.S. Geological Survey and other organizations across the U.S. to share any numbers on coastal wetland carbon. Along the way, their new team is upending some long-held assumptions about how carbon storage works in the real world.