Healthy salt marshes are not only important for seafood and recreation, they also play an important role in reducing climate change. Salt marshes absorb large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, thus decreasing the effects of global warming. These types of habitat are known as carbon sinks and contain large stores of carbon accumulated over hundreds to thousands of years. Generally, salt marshes and their organic-rich sediments that can be 10s of feet thick are 10 - 20 times more effective at storing carbon than mature tropical rainforests.
What is MGS doing to support blue carbon science?
- Blue Carbon Mapping - with support from the USDA-NRCS, MGS scientists developed satellite-based algorithms to predict the amount of carbon in salt marsh soils across the Northeast region.
If you want to work with these data, they are available for download here from the NRCS AgDataCommons data repository.
- Regional Coordination and Research - in collaboration with the Northeast Regional Ocean Council (NROC), MGS helps to coordinate and advance blue carbon efforts across the Northeast region. NROC is also funding MGS to evaluate the sources of carbon and sediment that sustain our salt marshes.
Blue Carbon Sequestration Viewer
By combining estimates for salt marsh vertical accretion and sediment carbon content, we have created a map viewer that allows anyone to view an estimate of annual carbon sequestration of any tax parcel in New England and New York. This work was funded by USDA-NRCS and NROC.
This product is still in development. The next step is to add restoration opportunity to the viewer and provide an estimate of how much additional carbon could be stored through restoration.