Using citizen science to estimate surficial soil Blue Carbon stocks in Great British saltmarshes

A new saltmarsh soil dataset comprising of geochemical and physical property data from 752 soil samples collected through a sampling program supported by citizen scientists has been brought together with existing data to make the first national estimates of the surficial (top 10 cm) soil OC stock for Great British (GB) saltmarshes. To allow the inclusion of secondary data in the soil stock estimate a new bespoke organic matter to organic carbon conversion for GB saltmarsh soil was developed allowing organic matter data measured using loss-on-ignition to be convert to organic carbon content. The total GB surficial soil OC stock is 2.320 ± 0.470 Mt; English saltmarshes hold 1.601 ± 0.426 Mt OC, Scottish saltmarshes hold 0.368 ± 0.091 Mt OC, and Welsh saltmarshes hold 0.351 ± 0.082 Mt OC. The stocks were calculated within a Markov Chain Monte Carlo framework allowing robust uncertainty estimates to be derived for the first time. Spatial mapping tools are available to accompany these stock estimates at individual saltmarsh habitats throughout GB. This data will aid in the protection and management of saltmarshes and represents the first steps towards the inclusion of saltmarsh OC in the national inventory accounting of blue carbon ecosystems.

Citation

Smeaton , C , Burden , A , Ruranska , P , Ladd , C , Garbutt , A , Jones , L , McMahon , L , Miller , L C , Skov , M W & Austin , W 2022 , ' Using citizen science to estimate surficial soil Blue Carbon stocks in Great British saltmarshes ' , Frontiers in Marine Science , vol. 9 , 959459 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.959459

Publication

Frontiers in Marine Science

Status

Peer reviewed

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.959459

ISSN

2296-7745

Type

Journal article

Rights

Copyright © 2022 Smeaton, Burden, Ruranska, Ladd, Garbutt, Jones, McMahon, Miller, Skov and Austin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Description

Funding: This research was finically supported by the Natural Environment Research Council funded Carbon Storage in Intertidal Environments (C-SIDE) project (grant NE/R010846/1) with additional support from the Scottish Blue Carbon Forum.