Renewable Island: A 'carbon sink' against climate change
Dr Grace Cott and Dr Mark Coughlan of UCD, whose research looks at how Ireland's marine habitats store carbon and potentially reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
With an investment of €2.6 million under the Marine Institute's 2021 Blue Carbon call, two Irish research teams led by Dr Grace Cott and Dr Mark Coughlan of University College Dublin, will undertake a substantial programme of research to investigate how Ireland's marine habitats store carbon and potentially reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
This flagship award by the Marine Institute is co-funded with contribution of €400,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The five-year programme of research will improve understanding of how Ireland's Blue Carbon habitats, which include coastal salt marshes and seagrass beds, can mitigate climate change.
The research will also investigate the substantial carbon sequestration capacity of seabed sediments which are challenging to quantify. The successful projects – BlueC and Quest – will deepen our understanding of the carbon dynamics in Irish marine ecosystems and assess their capacity to be integrated into climate policy.
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This is research that is specifically targeted to inform policy and regulation. It will provide knowledge and evidence to assist with Ireland's goal of attaining 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and improve our capacity to meet broader Irish and international climate and biodiversity targets.
Dr Paul Connolly, CEO of the Marine Institute said: “This research will be extremely important in generating a much greater understanding of how Ireland's marine and coastal systems act as a key carbon sink to mitigate against climate change.
“The ability to quantify the uptake and storage of atmospheric carbon by marine habitats such as salt marshes and seagrass beds could be key in helping to meet national and European climate adaptation and mitigation policy goals. This project is also important in the context of meeting EU nature restoration targets for those habitats that can capture and store carbon and prevent and reduce coastal erosion and flooding.”
Dr Cott, Principal Investigator in the BlueC project, added that “ocean and coastal marine systems play a significant role in the global carbon cycle, representing the largest long-term sink of carbon.”
Working with project partners NUI Galway and University College Cork, the overarching aim of BlueC is to advance scientific understanding of the carbon dynamics in Irish coastal and marine environments, whilst simultaneously improving management and harnessing their potential for climate mitigation, adaptation and other ecosystem services to underpin policy development.
Dr Mark Coughlan, also of University College Dublin and Principal Investigator in the Quest project, says: “Ireland's expansive marine resource has the potential to sequester and store significant amounts of carbon in seafloor sediments and the habitats they support. There is a scarcity of data and information on the past and present stock of carbon in seafloor sediments.
“At the same time, Ireland's seabed is coming under increased pressure from direct human activities which add to the impacts of climate change itself. To fully understand, and effectively manage the seabed in terms of maximising this Blue Carbon potential, requires a thorough understanding of carbon cycling in the marine environment over time, physical processes at the seafloor and high-quality spatial mapping.”
The BlueC and Quest projects are due to commence in June 2022, with the two teams sharing their research findings as widely as possible over the next five years.
The Blue Carbon Research Programme is carried out with the support of the Marine Institute and the Environmental Protection Agency funded by the Irish Government.
