Seagrass meadows: blue carbon's quiet partner
Seagrasses are flowering marine plants whose sediments store carbon and shelter young fish.
Seagrasses are not seaweeds; they are flowering plants that live fully underwater in shallow, sunlit seas. Their dense leaves slow water, trap sediment, and shelter fish, turtles and dugongs.
Carbon. Like mangroves, seagrass meadows build carbon-rich sediment over centuries. Per hectare they usually store less than mangroves but they cover very large areas of shallow coast.
Threats. Dredging, boat anchors, nutrient pollution and trawling, and loss of light when water becomes cloudy.
In Atlas. Seagrass is one of the themes with no data yet. The planned source is the UNEP-WCMC global seagrass distribution (version 7.1), whose terms of use must be checked before it is loaded. Once loaded, seagrass will appear next to mangrove on the map, in the country workspaces and in the carbon scenarios.
Related reading
More in Knowledge Base
- What mangroves do for people (ecosystem services)
- How mangrove restoration works (and fails)
- The mangrove species of East Africa
- Mangroves in Africa: the big picture
- East African and Indian Ocean mangroves
- Mangrove zonation: why different species grow in bands
- How satellites see mangroves
- Organisations and community involvement in carbon projects
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