Blue carbon burial along intertidal mudflats

Coastal blue carbon habitats perform many important environmental functions, including long-term carbon storage. These carbon storage estimates are typically limited to the sediments within specific types of coastal vegetation. However, recent studies have shown that large fluxes of organic carbon originating from traditional and non-traditional blue carbon systems are being buried along the margins and intertidal mudflats. For example, our recent study in China showed that over 75% of the blue carbon burial occurred in unvegetated tidal flats. Further, in Brazil, organic carbon burial rates along mudflats were found to be almost 3 times greater than the flux from within coastal vegetated systems. The implications of this research are that there is an underestimation of carbon burial from blue carbon systems as a result of the large burial rates along adjacent unvegetated regions.