Intertidal blue carbon ecosystems and their socio-economic value at Lindisfarne, northern England

Coastal Blue carbon ecosystems offer a range of ecosystem services including, for example, carbon sequestration, feeding grounds for birds and flood defence. Therefore, the conservation and management of these ecosystems can act as a nature-based solution that contributes to multiple ecological and climate goals. Blue carbon ecosystems achieve this due to their multifaceted nature and how the communities surrounding these ecosystems interact with them. 

 

An example of blue carbon ecosystems can be found in Lindisfarne national nature reserve (NNR) located on the Northumberland coastline in the Northeast of England. The Lindisfarne NNR contains saltmarshes, seagrass meadows and sandflats in close proximity to each other. Moreover, Lindisfarne not only has value as a source of blue carbon but has further human value due to it being a destination for pilgrimages, bird watchers and holiday makers, as well containing a residential population with a small-scale fishery. Therefore, they represent locations of both natural and cultural capital.

 

The close proximity of multiple blue carbon ecosystems and various human interactions provides an opportunity for a significant comparative analysis of the above blue carbon ecosystems under similar socio-environmental conditions. We do so in terms of both their carbon sequestration potential as well as their socio-economic importance.

 

Through our comparative analysis we present two strands of work. The first is our findings regarding the estimated total sediment and vegetative carbon stock within the Lindisfarne NNR, including two seagrass meadows with contrasting sediment profiles. Additionally, we quantify the various pools of carbon storage: labile, refractory and organic; and the carbon accumulation rates of each studied ecosystem, using ²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs dating analysed within a Bayesian framework. We also consider factors associated with carbon sequestration, such as vegetation coverage, surface elevation and sediment profile, in our analysis. In doing so this project will be one of the first to calculate carbon accumulation rates and carbon pools in UK seagrass meadows. The second strand of work is generated through a survey of the perceptions and values that people have towards coastal environments via discrete choice experiment survey. 

 

Taken together these results will provide insight into the design of coastal  management plans which focus on using the above blue carbon ecosystems as a tool for climate change mitigation through their long-term carbon sequestration as further contextualised through the priorities and values identified via the social survey.