Famosa Slough in Point Loma is part of a research study in how efficient salt marsh terrains are at storing carbon. Wetlands have the potential of being both a hedge against global warming and a buffer against rising sea levels
The local wetlands joins other areas like Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad, the Kendall Frost marsh in Mission Bay, the San Dieguito lagoon, and other coastal wetlands throughout the region in a study by the Scripps Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. This research will help increase understanding of the ecosystems and habitats that are in the nearshore area.
The conservation group, Wildcoast, has led efforts to understand the blue carbon habitats near the ocean which are particularly good at capturing and storing carbon.
Cory Pukini of Wildcoast, told KPBS:
“It’s an effort to try and catalog the amount of blue carbon that’s currently stored in our San Diego coastal wetlands and ecosystems. … We’re seeing if we can ecologically enhance them to create this ecological uplift so that we can sequester more carbon using these natural solutions to draw carbon out of the atmosphere.”
“… there are a lot of these opportunity parcels that we like to call them – these orphan wetlands that are in and around a lot of the currently existing wetlands in San Diego County that have the potential to be restored to enhance their capabilities to draw that carbon out of the atmosphere.”
Wildcoast Associate Director Zach Plopper, said:
“With an understanding of how much carbon is stored in our local wetlands it really makes San Diego a leader of natural climate solutions. The salt marsh and seagrass that we have here in San Diego County are these blue carbon ecosystems. They sequester and store more carbon than any other ecosystem on the planet.”
From KPBS:
The plants in the salt marsh grow fast, sucking a lot of carbon dioxide out of the air and some of that carbon gets trapped as plants die and new ones grow over them. It makes the wetlands a carbon sink, as some researchers call it.
Unfortunately, this wet terrain near the ocean is not as common as it used to be: 90% of the region’s coastal wetlands have been swallowed up by urbanization or dredged for recreation. But conservationists are optimistic.
Cutting carbon could help slow the pace of global warming because the carbon in the atmosphere contributes to a warmer climate.
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