Blue carbon stocks in South West Atlantic marshes

MONTEMAYOR, D.I.; MARTINETTO, P.; ALBERTI, J.; IRIBARNE, O.

Mar del Plata

Congreso; IV Congreso Internacional de Servicios Ecosistémicos en los Neotrópicos: de la investigación a la acción; 2015

The large stocks of carbon (C) stored in salt marshes make their preservation extremely valuable to reduce human impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In recent studies it was established the concern of limited and geographically biased data : many studies from North America, some from Europe but none from South America, Southern Africa or Southern Asia. These geographic limitations make it difficult to have a global comprehension of blue C ecosystems. South West Atlantic marshes behave differently to other marshes particularly due to the burrowing and herbivorous activities of the grapsid crab Neohelice granulata, and also because they have a characteristical plant species assamblage: Spartina alterniflora in the low marsh and Spartina densiflora in the upper marsh. In this context, we estimated C stocks for the two dominant Spartina species in South West Atlantic marshes.Through field sampling we estimated sediment C density and found that these marshes have a wide range of C stocks that changed for the different locations but not with the Spartina species. When comparing it to estimations of other world regions they are in the range of medium to low values, which could be related to the enlarge decomposition rates due to the oxygenation of the sediment through the crabs burrows.