Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Caribbean Division, The Nature Conservancy, Coral Gables, FL 33134, USA.
Biol Lett. 2023 Jun;19(6):20230075. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2023.0075. Epub 2023 Jun 21.
Seagrass beds provide tremendous services to society, including the storage of carbon, with important implications for climate change mitigation. Prioritizing conservation of this valuable natural capital is of global significance, and including seagrass beds in global carbon markets through projects that minimize loss, increase area or restore degraded areas represents a mechanism towards this end. Using newly available Caribbean seagrass distribution data, we estimated carbon storage in the region and calculated economic valuations of total ecosystem services and carbon storage. We estimated the 88 170 km of seagrass in the Caribbean stores 1337.8 (360.5-2335.0, minimum and maximum estimates, respectively) Tg carbon. The value of these seagrass ecosystems in terms of total ecosystem services and carbon alone was estimated to be $255 billion yr and $88.3 billion, respectively, highlighting their potential monetary importance for the region. Our results show that Caribbean seagrass beds are globally substantial pools of carbon, and our findings underscore the importance of such evaluation schemes to promote urgently needed conservation of these highly threatened and globally important ecosystems.
海草床为社会提供了巨大的服务，包括碳储存，这对气候变化缓解具有重要意义。优先保护这种有价值的自然资本具有全球意义，通过项目将海草床纳入全球碳市场，最大限度地减少损失、增加面积或恢复退化区域，是实现这一目标的一种机制。利用新获得的加勒比海草分布数据，我们估计了该地区的碳储存量，并计算了总生态系统服务和碳储存的经济估值。我们估计加勒比地区 88170 公里的海草储存了 1337.8（360.5-2335.0，分别为最小和最大估计值）Tg 碳。仅就总生态系统服务和碳而言，这些海草生态系统的价值估计分别为 2550 亿美元年和 883 亿美元，突出了它们对该地区的潜在货币重要性。我们的研究结果表明，加勒比海草床是全球范围内大量的碳库，我们的研究结果强调了这种评估方案的重要性，以促进对这些受到高度威胁和具有全球重要性的生态系统的急需保护。
