Nonuniform organic carbon stock loss in soils across disturbed blue carbon ecosystems.
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40350444.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-59752-9 and PMC identifier 12066739.
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Abstract
Conserving blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) has gained international attention in climate change mitigation, reflected in United Nations policies and voluntary carbon-offset projects. These efforts assume significant and uniform losses of soil organic carbon (C<sub>org</sub>) throughout the top meter following disturbances, yet this assumption lacks robust empirical support. Here, we synthesized 239 paired observations of intact and disturbed BCEs globally. Soil C<sub>org</sub> stock losses in the top meters vary widely: from -68.4% (agricultural conversion, ±13.4%, 95% confidence interval) to +0.8% (harvesting, ±46.2%) in mangroves, -25.9% (climate/hydrological change, ± 30.7%) to +48.6% (grazing, ±78.7%) in saltmarshes, and -34.2% (vegetation cover damage, ±22.4%) to -27.4% (dredging, ±33.6%) in seagrasses. Extensive disturbances deplete C<sub>org</sub> down to 50-200 cm, while limited disturbances impact only the top 10-30 cm or resulted in negligible losses. This refinement contributes to improved global inventories of greenhouse gas emissions from BCEs, supporting abatement policy settings for nationally determined contributions commitments.