About

Funded by Science Foundation Ireland the UCD BlueCarbon project aims to understand how coastal wetlands can contribute to and enhance climate mitigation and adaptation

About the project

Coastal wetland ecosystems are critical to maintaining human well-being and global carbon cycling. In particular, tidal saltmarshes, seagrass beds, and mangroves provide numerous benefits and services including protection from storm surge and sea-level rise, erosion prevention along shorelines, nutrient cycling, sediment trapping, and habitat provision which are essential for climate adaptation and resilience. Top among these benefits is the fact that they remove large amounts of the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it in soils for centuries to millennia. This carbon sequestered in coastal vegetated habitats has been termed "Blue Carbon". Ireland has two of these habitats, tidal saltmarshes, and seagrass beds. . Such extremely high rates of carbon sequestration are attributed to high rates of plant production, low rates of decomposition, and a unique ability to trap sediments. These characteristics make coastal wetlands perfect allies in countering climate change.

This project is funded by Science Foundation Ireland under the Starting Investigator Research Grant (18/SIRG/5614)