Sediment transport and carbon sequestration characteristics along mangrove fringed coasts
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Sediment transport and carbon sequestration characteristics along mangrove fringed coasts TU Qiang1, YANG Shengyun1, ZHOU Qiulin2, YANG Juan3* 1
College of Ocean and Earth Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
2
Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Xiamen 361005, China
3
School of Marine Science, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
Received 8 April 2014; accepted 24 September 2014 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract Mangroves play an important role in sequestering carbon and trapping sediments. However, the effectiveness of such functions is unclear due to the restriction of knowledge on the sedimentation process across the vegetation boundaries. To detect the effects of mangrove forests on sediment transportation and organic carbon sequestration, the granulometric and organic carbon characteristics of mangrove sediments were investigated from three vegetation zones of four typical mangrove habitats on the Leizhou Peninsula coast. Based on our results, sediment transport was often “environmentally sensitive” to the vegetation friction. A transition of the sediment transport mode from the mudflat zone to the interior/fringe zone was often detected from the cumulative frequency curve. The vegetation cover also assists the trapping of material, resulting in a significantly higher concentration of organic carbon in the interior surface sediments. However, the graphic parameters of core sediments reflected a highly temporal variability due to the sedimentation process at different locations. The sediment texture ranges widely from sand to mud, although the sedimentary environments are restricted within the same energy level along the fluvial-marine transition zone. Based on the PCA results, the large variation was mainly attributed to either the mean grain size features or the organic carbon features. A high correlation between the depth and δ13C value also indicated an increasing storage of mangrove-derived organic carbon with time. Key words: mangroves, grain size distribution, sedimentary organic carbon, Leizhou Peninsula
Citation: Tu Qiang, Yang Shengyun, Zhou Qiulin, Yang Juan. 2015. Sediment transport and carbon sequestration characteristics along mangrove fringed coasts. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 34(2): 21–26, doi: 10.1007/s13131-015-0614-y
1 Introduction Mangrove ecosystems are regarded as one of the most efficient blue carbon sinks for long-term sequestration of organic carbon (Jennerjahn and Itekkot, 2002; Zhang et al., 2012). In addition to burying a fraction of their own production, these blue carbon sinks in coastal habitats, including mangroves, saltmarsh, and seagrass, reduce flow, alter turbulence, and attenuate wave action, thereby promoting sedimentation and reducing sediment resuspension (Koch et al., 2006; Gacia and Duarte, 2001). Consequently, the locations of mangrove ecosystems with intense carbon processing have a potentially high impact on the global carbon budget (Kristensen et al.
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