By May Chan
In Hong Kong, there is a coastal wildlife reserve full of trees with dense tangles of prop roots; the roots make trees appear to be standing on stilts above water. Those odd-looking trees are called mangrove trees. According to the National Ocean Service, mangrove trees: “only grow in areas with low-oxygen soil of tropical or subtropical latitudes near the equator,” and where slow-moving waters allow fine sediments to collect. Their location makes them adept for protecting coasts from erosion and acting as a haven for living creatures, such as cormorants, snails, and insects. Moreover, a recent study found that mangrove trees are capable of absorbing significant amounts of carbon, which plays a large role in regulating the Earth’s climate.
Like other coastal wetlands, mangroves are effective carbon sinks; in other words, mangroves can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their roots, branches, and the sediment that forms around them. Mangroves can store up to 10 times as much carbon as forests (The Nature Conservancy, 2020). Hence, the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy estimates that by 2050, conserving mangroves might aid in absorbing up to 1.4 billion tons of emissions annually. Mangroves “hold the majority of the carbon in their soil and sediment” in contrast to rainforests, which primarily store carbon in biomass and release it when the trees die (Erickson-Davis, 2018). If undisturbed, carbon stays in mangroves for millennia.
Despite the fact that mangrove loss is frequently caused by urban development, mangroves can still be found in cities or residential areas. Urban mangroves may be supplying more people with direct ecosystem services, because even tiny mangrove restoration projects have the potential to benefit large populations by offering ecological services like carbon sequestration and carbon dioxide abatement (Reyes et al., 2022). In short, as cities continue to grow, and climate change continues to rise, urban mangrove conservation and restoration can help preserve crucial functions of carbon sequestration.
Nowadays, by using direct air capture (DAC) technology, we can replicate mangroves’ ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it underground. The first commercial DAC system in the world is operated by a Swiss company by the name of Climework. The devices draw air into a “collector” using a fan, and a selective filter in the “collector” traps carbon dioxide. Once the filter is full, the collection is shut off, and the carbon is stored. However, this method can only be applied as a last resort in the case of serious climatic problems. Considering how expensive DAC is right now, it would require government and corporate investment on a par with a wartime budget (D’Alessandro, 2021). Therefore, increasing plantations such as mangrove forests, are still the most convenient, cheap, and effective way to reduce carbon within the atmosphere.
Hence, protecting the mangrove trees is crucial to fighting climate change. Because of human activity, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now higher than ever before. However, significant ecosystems such as the mangrove forests, which have enormous capacity for carbon sequestration, are currently disappearing at an alarming rate. The rapid disappearance indicates that these mangrove habitats should be preserved because their loss will significantly disrupt the equilibrium of atmospheric gasses. In order to fight climate change, we need to preserve current mangrove trees and plant saplings for the future generations.
Citations
Nyanga, C. (2020). The Role of Mangroves Forests in Decarbonizing the Atmosphere. In www.intechopen.com. IntechOpen. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/71927
Erickson-Davis, M. (2018, May 3). New study finds mangroves may store way more carbon than we thought. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2018/05/new-study-finds-mangroves-may-store-way-more-carbon-than-we-thought/
Reyes, G., Smyth, A., & Reynolds, L. (2022). What are urban mangroves? EDIS, 2022(1). https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-ss706-2022
D’Alessandro, D. (2021, January 20). Engineers have built machines to scrub CO2 from the air. But will it halt climate change? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/engineers-have-built-machines-to-scrub-co-from-the-air-but-will-it-halt-climate-change-152975
Nyanga, C. (2020). The Role of Mangroves Forests in Decarbonizing the Atmosphere. In www.intechopen.com. IntechOpen. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/71927
Mangrove restorers in Haiti bet on resilience amid rising violence. (2022, September 29). Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/09/mangrove-restorers-in-haiti-bet-on-resilience-amid-rising-violence/
A blue carbon future. (n.d.). Discovery.kaust.edu.sa. https://discovery.kaust.edu.sa/en/article/372
Nature may have solutions your city is looking for. (2019, August 7). IUCN. https://www.iucn.org/news/forests/201908/nature-may-have-solutions-your-city-looking
The Nature Conservancy. (2020, May 4). Why Are Florida’s Mangroves Important? The Nature Conservancy. https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/florida/stories-in-florida/why-mangroves-important/
About Author
