Articles | Volume 13, issue 17
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4915-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-4915-2016
Research article
 | 
07 Sep 2016
Research article |  | 07 Sep 2016

Can mud (silt and clay) concentration be used to predict soil organic carbon content within seagrass ecosystems?

Oscar Serrano, Paul S. Lavery, Carlos M. Duarte, Gary A. Kendrick, Antoni Calafat, Paul H. York, Andy Steven, and Peter I. Macreadie

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Cited articles

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We explored the relationship between organic carbon and mud (i.e. silt and clay) contents in seagrass ecosystems to address whether mud can be used to predict soil C content, thereby enabling robust scaling up exercises at a low cost as part of blue carbon stock assessments. We show that mud is not a universal proxy for blue carbon content in seagrass ecosystems, but it can be used to estimate soil Corg content when low biomass seagrass species (i.e. Zostera, Halodule and Halophila) are present.
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