What is blue carbon?
Carbon stored by coastal ecosystems: mangroves, seagrass meadows and salt marshes.
Blue carbon is the carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems, mainly mangroves, seagrass meadows and tidal salt marshes.
These ecosystems grow in waterlogged, low-oxygen sediments. Dead roots and leaves decompose slowly there, so carbon accumulates in the soil for centuries. In mangroves a large share of the carbon is in the soil, not in the trees.
When the ecosystem is cleared or drained, stored carbon can be released as CO₂. That is why protecting intact mangroves and restoring degraded ones both matter for climate, as well as for fisheries, coastal protection and livelihoods.
How to interpret it
Atlas reports area (hectares) from maps and field data. Carbon figures in the Scenario Lab are illustrative brackets, not measurements: they only become meaningful once local soil and biomass data are added.
Related reading
More in Knowledge Base
- East African and Indian Ocean mangroves
- LAPSSET: why a corridor project matters to mangroves
- Sea-level rise and the "coastal squeeze"
- What Atlas is, and why it is more than a mangrove map
- How to read a hot-spot map
- How mangrove restoration works (and fails)
- Mangrove zonation: why different species grow in bands
- Blue carbon projects and carbon markets
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