Salt Marshes Will Absorb Carbon until 2050, but Then Be Overwhelmed

[xchrom]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=salt-marshes-to-absorb-carbon-to-20

OSLO (Reuters) - Salt marshes around the world's coasts will help slow climate change until about 2050 by soaking up greenhouse gases but then risk making the problem even worse as sea levels rise, a study showed on Wednesday.

Plants such as grasses and shrubs - which thrive in salt marshes found from India to the United States - absorb heat-trapping carbon from the air. Much of it then ends up buried in sediment where it no longer stokes global warming.

"The net impact of temperature warming and sea level rise is to increase carbon burial rates in the first half of the twenty-first century," researchers in the journal Nature wrote.

Beyond about 2050, rising sea levels would start water logging plants however, the study said, halting the transfer of carbon into the muddy sediment. "At some point too much flooding is bad," lead author Matthew Kirwan at the University of Virginia told Reuters.

[AverageJoe90]

1. Planting mangroves would be one helpful solution, plant-wise. nt