Journal
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 338-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0096-y
Keywords
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Funding
- CSIRO Flagship Marine and Coastal Carbon Biogeochemical Cluster
- CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund
- King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
- Generalitat de Catalunya [2014 SGR-1356, 2014 SGR-120]
- Obra Social 'LaCaixa'
- ARC DECRA [DE170101524]
- IAS-UWA
- Medshift project [CGL2015-71809-P]
- US National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research programme [DEB-1237517]
- Hodgkin Trust Top-up Scholarship
- [UKM-DIP-2017-005]
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1237517] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Seagrass ecosystems contain globally significant organic carbon (C) stocks. However, climate change and increasing frequency of extreme events threaten their preservation. Shark Bay, Western Australia, has the largest C stock reported for a seagrass ecosystem, containing up to 1.3% of the total C stored within the top metre of seagrass sediments worldwide. On the basis of field studies and satellite imagery, we estimate that 36% of Shark Bay's seagrass meadows were damaged following a marine heatwave in 2010/2011. Assuming that 10 to 50% of the seagrass sediment C stock was exposed to oxic conditions after disturbance, between 2 and 9 Tg CO2 could have been released to the atmosphere during the following three years, increasing emissions from land-use change in Australia by 4-21% per annum. With heatwaves predicted to increase with further climate warming, conservation of seagrass ecosystems is essential to avoid adverse feedbacks on the climate system.
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