Seasonal Species Variation of Sediment Organic Carbon Stocks in Salt Marshes of Tuticorin Area, Southern India

Increasing attention in global blue carbon investigation in these contemporary times, salt marsh has the distinctive importance in coastal ecosystems. We examined sediment organic carbon stock in the four dominant salt marsh species areas viz. Suaeda maritima, Sesuvium portulacastrum, Arthrocnemum indicum, and Salicornia brachiata from Tuticorin, southeast coast of India in two seasons i.e. dry (July 2015) and wet season (January 2016). We examined above ground (AGB) and below ground biomass (BGB), sediment physico-chemical properties like pH, BD, composition, OM%, C-org%, C and N%, sediment organic carbon stocks (SOCS) and multivariate analysis on studied variables. Maximum AGB was recorded in A. indicum in both dry and wet season (10.91 +/- 0.15g/cm(2) and 14.87 +/- 0.68g/cm(2)). The highest BGB was observed in S. maritima in both seasons, as 2.01 +/- 0.35g/cm(2) and 4.49 +/- 0.35g/cm(2), respectively. The OM percentage ranged between 4.13 +/-.083 and 7.23 +/-.088% and the highest was observed in the wet season from S. maritima. Sediment organic stocks (Mgha (-1)) ranged from 8.42 +/-.640 to 54.46 +/- 1.46Mgha (-1) reflects nearly 7 times higher than the dry season. The present study can be useful for the estimation of blue carbon budgets in tropical coastal ecosystem since this type was the first hand information from this area.