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      CO 2 Efflux from Cleared Mangrove Peat

      research-article
      1 , * , 2 , 3
      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          Background

          CO 2 emissions from cleared mangrove areas may be substantial, increasing the costs of continued losses of these ecosystems, particularly in mangroves that have highly organic soils.

          Methodology/Principal Findings

          We measured CO 2 efflux from mangrove soils that had been cleared for up to 20 years on the islands of Twin Cays, Belize. We also disturbed these cleared peat soils to assess what disturbance of soils after clearing may have on CO 2 efflux. CO 2 efflux from soils declines from time of clearing from ∼10 600 tonnes km −2 year −1 in the first year to 3000 tonnes km 2 year −1 after 20 years since clearing. Disturbing peat leads to short term increases in CO 2 efflux (27 umol m −2 s −1), but this had returned to baseline levels within 2 days.

          Conclusions/Significance

          Deforesting mangroves that grow on peat soils results in CO 2 emissions that are comparable to rates estimated for peat collapse in other tropical ecosystems. Preventing deforestation presents an opportunity for countries to benefit from carbon payments for preservation of threatened carbon stocks.

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          Most cited references71

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          The effect of permafrost thaw on old carbon release and net carbon exchange from tundra.

          Permafrost soils in boreal and Arctic ecosystems store almost twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere. Permafrost thaw and the microbial decomposition of previously frozen organic carbon is considered one of the most likely positive climate feedbacks from terrestrial ecosystems to the atmosphere in a warmer world. The rate of carbon release from permafrost soils is highly uncertain, but it is crucial for predicting the strength and timing of this carbon-cycle feedback effect, and thus how important permafrost thaw will be for climate change this century and beyond. Sustained transfers of carbon to the atmosphere that could cause a significant positive feedback to climate change must come from old carbon, which forms the bulk of the permafrost carbon pool that accumulated over thousands of years. Here we measure net ecosystem carbon exchange and the radiocarbon age of ecosystem respiration in a tundra landscape undergoing permafrost thaw to determine the influence of old carbon loss on ecosystem carbon balance. We find that areas that thawed over the past 15 years had 40 per cent more annual losses of old carbon than minimally thawed areas, but had overall net ecosystem carbon uptake as increased plant growth offset these losses. In contrast, areas that thawed decades earlier lost even more old carbon, a 78 per cent increase over minimally thawed areas; this old carbon loss contributed to overall net ecosystem carbon release despite increased plant growth. Our data document significant losses of soil carbon with permafrost thaw that, over decadal timescales, overwhelms increased plant carbon uptake at rates that could make permafrost a large biospheric carbon source in a warmer world.
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            Present state and future of the world's mangrove forests

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              Coastal ecosystem-based management with nonlinear ecological functions and values.

              A common assumption is that ecosystem services respond linearly to changes in habitat size. This assumption leads frequently to an "all or none" choice of either preserving coastal habitats or converting them to human use. However, our survey of wave attenuation data from field studies of mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass beds, nearshore coral reefs, and sand dunes reveals that these relationships are rarely linear. By incorporating nonlinear wave attenuation in estimating coastal protection values of mangroves in Thailand, we show that the optimal land use option may instead be the integration of development and conservation consistent with ecosystem-based management goals. This result suggests that reconciling competing demands on coastal habitats should not always result in stark preservation-versus-conversion choices.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2011
                29 June 2011
                : 6
                : 6
                : e21279
                Affiliations
                [1 ]School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
                [2 ]Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, United States of America
                [3 ]Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland, United States of America
                National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, New Zealand
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: CEL RWR ICF. Performed the experiments: CEL RWR ICF. Analyzed the data: CEL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CEL RWR ICF. Wrote the paper: CEL RWR ICF.

                Article
                PONE-D-11-05263
                10.1371/journal.pone.0021279
                3126811
                21738628
                6147dfd4-b7fa-4f20-b781-12e3e69f4ccc
                Lovelock et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 22 March 2011
                : 23 May 2011
                Page count
                Pages: 4
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Ecology
                Coastal Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Global Change Ecology
                Marine Ecology

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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