What’s in our toolbox: Exploring and unlocking Canada’s blue carbon potential

Abstract

Despite growing recognition of the ability of blue carbon ecosystems to sequester and store atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) for several decades, their value is often overlooked in marine management decisions and climate change policies. Integrating blue carbon into climate mitigation and marine planning requires quantification of habitat extent and carbon dynamics. Canada has the world’s longest coastline and supports an extensive range of productive carbon-sequestering marine ecosystems, yet blue carbon inventories have not been established in of most of these areas. Substantial geospatial data and assessments of carbon stocks and sequestration are necessary to produce inventories, yet their availability remains limited in Canada. This study explores the information required to establish blue carbon inventories and uses IPCC’s three-tiered assessment structure to begin assembling inventories in two Canadian case study regions: Owls Head Provincial Park (OHPP), Nova Scotia, and the British Columbia (BC) Northern Shelf Bioregion (NSB) Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network. These assessments demonstrate how carbon inventories can be established in situations with varying levels of data and resource availability, while developing a preliminary estimate of carbon storage in the areas. This research indicates that, while existing data and information has enabled baselines estimates for several blue carbon ecosystems, significant knowledge gaps and limitations remain. On this basis, recommendations for research priorities are provided, and insights are given into integrating blue carbon inventories into the management of Canada’s coastlines.

Keywords: Blue Carbon, Blue carbon inventories, Atlantic Canada, Pacific Canada, Northern Shelf Bioregion, Marine protected area network, Owls Head Provincial Park