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Identifying and filling critical knowledge gaps can optimize financial viability of blue carbon projects in tidal wetlands

Authors :
Tim J. B. Carruthers
S. Beaux Jones
Megan K. Terrell
Jonathan F. Scheibly
Brendan J. Player
Valerie A. Black
Justin R. Ehrenwerth
Patrick D. Biber
Rod M. Connolly
Steve Crooks
Jason P. Curole
Kelly M. Darnell
Alyssa M. Dausman
Allison L. DeJong
Shawn M. Doyle
Christopher R. Esposito
Daniel A. Friess
James W. Fourqurean
Ioannis Y. Georgiou
Gabriel D. Grimsditch
Songjie He
Eva R. Hillmann
Guerry O. Holm
Jennifer Howard
Hoonshin Jung
Stacy D. Jupiter
Erin Kiskaddon
Ken W. Krauss
Paul S. Lavery
Bingqing Liu
Catherine E. Lovelock
Sarah K. Mack
Peter I. Macreadie
Karen J. McGlathery
J. Patrick Megonigal
Brian J. Roberts
Scott Settelmyer
Lorie W. Staver
Hilary J. Stevens
Ariana E. Sutton-Grier
Jorge A. Villa
John R. White
Michelle Waycott
Source :
Frontiers in Environmental Science, Vol 12 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
Frontiers Media S.A., 2024.

Abstract

One of the world’s largest “blue carbon” ecosystems, Louisiana’s tidal wetlands on the US Gulf of Mexico coast, is rapidly being lost. Louisiana’s strong legal, regulatory, and monitoring framework, developed for one of the world’s largest tidal wetland systems, provides an opportunity for a programmatic approach to blue carbon accreditation to support restoration of these ecologically and economically important tidal wetlands. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands span ∼1.4 million ha and accumulate 5.5–7.3 Tg yr−1 of blue carbon (organic carbon), ∼6%–8% of tidal marsh blue carbon accumulation globally. Louisiana has a favorable governance framework to advance blue carbon accreditation, due to centralized restoration planning, long term coastal monitoring, and strong legal and regulatory frameworks around carbon. Additional restoration efforts, planned through Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan, over 50 years are projected to create, or avoid loss of, up to 81,000 ha of wetland. Current restoration funding, primarily from Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlements, will be fully committed by the early 2030s and additional funding sources are required. Existing accreditation methodologies have not been successfully applied to coastal Louisiana’s ecosystem restoration approaches or herbaceous tidal wetland types. Achieving financial viability for accreditation of these restoration and wetland types will require expanded application of existing blue carbon crediting methodologies. It will also require expanded approaches for predicting the future landscape without restoration, such as numerical modeling, to be validated. Additional methodologies (and/or standards) would have many common elements with those currently available but may be beneficial, depending on the goals and needs of both the state of Louisiana and potential purchasers of Louisiana tidal wetland carbon credits. This study identified twenty targeted needs that will address data and knowledge gaps to maximize financial viability of blue carbon accreditation for Louisiana’s tidal wetlands. Knowledge needs were identified in five categories: legislative and policy, accreditation methodologies and standards, soil carbon flux, methane flux, and lateral carbon flux. Due to the large spatial scale and diversity of tidal wetlands, it is expected that progress in coastal Louisiana has high potential to be generalized to similar wetland ecosystems across the northern Gulf of Mexico and globally.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
2296665X
Volume :
12
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Frontiers in Environmental Science
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.5cd397a0494103808347c22f53f494
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2024.1421850