Soil carbon in the world’s tidal marshes

Maxwell, T.L., Spalding, M.D., Friess, D.A., Murray, N.J., Rogers, K., Rovai, A.S., Smart, L.S., Weilguny, L., Adame, M.F., Adams, J.B., Austin, W.E.N., Copertino, M.S., Cott, G.M., Duarte de Paula Costa, M., Holmquist, J.R., Ladd, C.J.T., Lovelock, C.E., Ludwig, M., Moritsch, M.M., Navarro, A., et al. (2024). Soil carbon in the world’s tidal marshes. Nature Communications 15 (1) e10265. 10.1038/s41467-024-54572-9.

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Abstract

Tidal marshes are threatened coastal ecosystems known for their capacity to store large amounts of carbon in their water-logged soils. Accurate quantification and mapping of global tidal marshes soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks is of considerable value to conservation efforts. Here, we used training data from 3710 unique locations, landscape-level environmental drivers and a global tidal marsh extent map to produce a global, spatially explicit map of SOC storage in tidal marshes at 30 m resolution. Here we show the total global SOC stock to 1 m to be 1.44 Pg C, with a third of this value stored in the United States of America. On average, SOC in tidal marshes' 0-30 and 30-100 cm soil layers are estimated at 83.1 Mg C ha-1 (average predicted error 44.8 Mg C ha-1) and 185.3 Mg C ha-1 (average predicted error 105.7 Mg C ha-1), respectively.

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