Coastal Blue Carbon: methods for assessing carbon stocks and emission factors in mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrass meadows

Published: 2014 (updated June 2018)

Coastal ecosystems are critical to maintaining human well-being and global biodiversity. Mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrasses sequester and store significant amounts of coastal blue carbon from the atmosphere and ocean and are now recognized for their role in mitigating climate change. Conservation and restoration of these coastal ecosystems has been increasingly addressed in international and national climate change mitigation policy and finance mechanisms. However, to date, countries have not incorporated coastal blue carbon into their portfolio of climate change mitigation or coastal management policies and actions, largely because the mechanisms for assessing blue carbon were not well defined or standardized.

To address this concern, of the International Blue Carbon Initiative’s team of 34 experts in the fields of coastal carbon measurement, remote sensing, and climate policy produced this manual with the goal standardizing protocols for sampling methods, laboratory measurements, and analysis of blue carbon stocks and fluxes. The manual will provide scientists and coastal managers with a practical tool to produce robust blue carbon data.

Access the manual via Conservation International (link)

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Suggested citation: Howard, J., Hoyt, S., Isensee, K., Pidgeon, E., Telszewski, M. (eds.) (2014). Coastal Blue
Carbon: Methods for assessing carbon stocks and emissions factors in mangroves, tidal
salt marshes, and seagrass meadows. Conservation International, Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Arlington, Virginia, USA.