These Tiny Mangroves Hold Vast Stores of Carbon

[sue4e3]

Squat mangrove forests that seem at first blush to simply eke by along the coasts of Baja California are sitting on a big secret — one with sweeping implications in an era of accelerating climate change.

Despite their diminutive appearance, scientists discovered that these mucky coastal ecosystems store huge amounts of carbon, helping to slow global warming.
The peninsula’s low-growing mangrove forests harbor at least as much carbon as towering mangrove forests found elsewhere, scientists led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — and more carbon for every acre than many of the world’s forests.

“This scrawny forest that you wouldn’t think twice about actually had a lot of carbon,” said Matthew Kirwan, a coastal ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He wasn’t involved with the study, which he said relied on “well established” methods for estimating carbon content.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/tiny-mangroves-hold-vast-stores-carbon-20182

[Duppers]

1. Some good news for a change. :)

Btw, my neighbor works at the same institute as Matthew Kirwan.