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TheConversationCanada
New research sheds lights on the huge carbon store in Canada’s seabed
By Graham Epstein, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Biology, University of VictoriaJulia K. Baum, Professor of Biology, Department of Biology, University of Victoria,
16 days ago
A seabed habitat on the ocean floor off the coast of Nova Scotia seen on the third dive of the NOAA Deep Connections 2019 expedition (NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research)
Protecting and effectively managing oceans and seabeds are crucial in the fight against climate change.
We are part of a group of scientists who set out to address that problem and our recent study details the creation of the first high-resolution maps of carbon in Canada’s seabed sediments.
These maps provide the first steps towards including climate change considerations in Canada’s seabed conservation.
Photo of muddy mixed sediment in Halls Bay, Newfoundland in 1990. (Natural Resources Canada)
Mapping seabed carbon
One of the first steps towards incorporating climate change mitigation in seabed management is to quantify and map this major carbon store.
In our new study, we compiled the best available data on the composition of seabed sediments across Canada and combined this with a wide range of environmental data within a machine learning predictive mapping process to create the first national map of organic carbon stocks in seabed sediments.
The resulting high resolution seabed carbon map covers 4.5 million square kilometres, which is nearly 80 per cent of Canada’s total marine area or 90 per cent of the seafloor area above 2,500 metres.
There is considerable variation in the amount of carbon stored in different parts of Canada’s seabed. On the west coast in British Columbia, the muddy sediments at the bottom of fjords and inlets were estimated to contain particularly high levels of carbon, along with parts of the enclosed Salish Sea. This was contrasted by very low carbon in shallower areas offshore, where strong waves and currents frequently stir up the sediment leaving little carbon to accumulate.
On Canada’s east coast, enclosed inlets and bays also contained the highest amount of carbon. However, a significant amount was also predicted to occur in the deep channels of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In comparison, the Arctic seafloor generally contained lower levels of carbon, but relatively high carbon was predicted in sediments close to the Arctic coasts and in the northern parts of Baffin Bay near Greenland.
Future developments
There is increasing evidence that human activities are impacting seabed sediment carbon stocks. For example, a recent study estimated that global fishing activities using bottom trawls and dredges disturb huge amounts of seabed sediments and may cause a considerable amount of the carbon to be emitted as CO2 .
Although there is significant uncertainty in the scale of these estimates, the maps produced here may provide opportunities to better research appropriate management strategies to limit the potential loss of carbon due to disturbance of the seafloor in Canada.
Habitats such as seagrass beds, saltmarshes and kelp forests are already included in Canada’s marine conserved areas in the hope that by providing them protection, their carbon storage capacity will be maintained or enhanced. One option would be to include carbon-rich seafloor sediments within Canada’s expanding marine conservation network for similar precautionary carbon protection. This would be a sensible low-risk strategy.
There may also be the potential to manage or modify human activities that disturb carbon-rich seabed areas. Using this map to gain an understanding of where these interactions occur could allow better targeting of research and management actions.
Overall, seabed sediments are one of the world’s largest carbon stores. It is important to consider how to best manage them as part of our toolbox for slowing down runaway climate change.
This article was co-authored by Susanna Fuller, vice-president of conservation and projects at Oceans North and senior research fellow at Dalhousie University.
Graham Epstein receives support from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance partnership grant #ALLRP571068 awarded to Julia K. Baum, and is also funded by a Mitacs-Accelerate Fellowship which is jointly funded by Oceans North.
Julia K. Baum receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Mitacs, and Oceans North.
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