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Seagrasses And Ocean Acidification | Earth Wise

May 13, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Seagrass can buffer ocean acidification

Seagrasses are the basis of important marine ecosystems.   Sea turtles, bat rays, leopard sharks, fish, and harbor seals are just some of the marine creatures that visit seagrass ecosystems for the food and habitat they provide.  They are nursery grounds for many aquatic animals and many birds visit seagrass meadows to dine on what lives within them.  They may seem like slimy grasses that we walk through along some shorelines, but they are important.

These marine forests are valuable for many different reasons including climate mitigation and erosion control.  A third of the carbon dioxide emitted across the globe is absorbed by the ocean and seagrass meadows are an important carbon sink.

A new study, recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, investigated how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification.  The six-year-long study found that these ecosystems can alleviate low ocean pH – that is, more acidic – conditions for extended periods of time, even at night in the absence of photosynthesis. 

In some places, the pH buffering from the seagrasses brings the local environments back to preindustrial pH conditions, like what the ocean might have experienced around the year 1750.

Seagrasses naturally absorb carbon as they photosynthesize when the sun is out, which drives the buffering ability.  The study found the surprising result that the effects of pH buffering even persisted during the night, when there is no photosynthesis.

The study has implications for aquaculture management as well as climate change mitigation, and conservation and restoration efforts.  Globally, seagrass ecosystems are in decline.  These results show how important it is to help them survive and prosper.

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Seagrasses Turn Back the Clock on Ocean Acidification

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of Claire Fackler, CINMS, NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wildfires And Carbon

September 17, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

This summer has been an unprecedented year for fires in the Arctic.  Major fires have burned throughout the Arctic in Russia, Canada, and Greenland.  In total these fires released 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in June alone, which is as much as Sweden emits in an entire year.

In an average year, wildfires around the world burn an area equivalent to the size of India and emit more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than global road, rail, shipping and air transport combined.

Ordinarily, this is part of a natural cycle.  As vegetation in burned areas regrows, it draws CO2 back out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis.  This is part of the fire-recovery cycle, which can take less than a year in grasslands, but decades in forests.  But in Arctic or tropical peatlands, full recovery may not occur for centuries.

A recent study looked at and quantified the important role that charcoal plays in helping to compensate for carbon emissions from fires.  In wildfires, some of the vegetation is not consumed by burning, but instead is transformed to charcoal – referred to as pyrogenic carbon.   This carbon-rich material can be stored in soils and oceans over very long time periods.

Researchers have combined field studies, satellite data, and modelling to quantify the amount of carbon that is placed in storage in the form of charcoal.  Their results are that the production of pyrogenic carbon amounts to about 12% of the CO2 emissions from fires and can be considered a significant buffer for landscape fire emissions.

Charcoal does not represent a solution to the problem of increasingly intense wildfires, but it is important to take it into account in understanding what is happening.

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How wildfires trap carbon for centuries to millennia

Photo, posted August 17, 2018, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Value Of Biodiversity

July 16, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EW-07-16-18-The-Value-of-Biodiversity.mp3

It is often said that biodiversity is crucial for staving off extinctions.  Ecosystems are complex and are essentially defined by the interdependencies among the various animals and plants.  It stands to reason that removing species from an ecosystem can have significant effects up and down the food chain.  Extinctions are much more likely when biodiversity diminishes.

[Read more…] about The Value Of Biodiversity

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