Considering "Coastal Carbon" in Existing U.S. Federal Statutes and Policies

Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses provide important ecosystem services, including nursery habitat for fish, shoreline protection, and the recently recognized service of carbon sequestration and storage. When these wetland ecosystems are degraded or destroyed, the car...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Coastal management 2013-09, Vol.41 (5), p.439-456
Main Authors: Pendleton, Linwood H., Sutton-Grier, Ariana E., Gordon, David R., Murray, Brian C., Victor, Britta E., Griffis, Roger B., Lechuga, Jen A.V., Giri, Chandra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agency
Air pollution
Aquatic ecosystems
assessment
Carbon
Carbon sequestration
Climate change
Coastal
Coastal ecology
Coastal ecosystems
Coastal environments
Coastal zone management
Ecology
Economics
ecosystem service
Ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Environment
Environmental changes
Environmental impact
Environmental policy
Federal policies
Fish
Gases
Global warming
Greenhouse gases
Greenhouses
Habitats
implementation
Law
Mangroves
Marine
Marshes
Nursery grounds
Policies
Policy implementation
Regulation
Salt marshes
Saltmarshes
Seagrasses
Services
Statutes
Storage
Values
Wetlands
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Summary:Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses provide important ecosystem services, including nursery habitat for fish, shoreline protection, and the recently recognized service of carbon sequestration and storage. When these wetland ecosystems are degraded or destroyed, the carbon can be released to the atmosphere, where it adds to the concentration of greenhouses gases (GHGs) that contribute to climate change. Many federal statutes and policies specifically require that impacts on ecosystem services be considered in policy implementation. Yet, no federal statute, regulation, or policy accounts directly for the carbon held in coastal habitats. There are a number of federal statutes and policies for which coastal carbon ecosystem services could reasonably be added to environmental and ecosystem considerations already implemented. We look at a subset of these statutes and policies to illustrate how coastal carbon ecosystem services and values might affect the implementation and outcomes of such statutes generally. We identify key steps for the inclusion of the ecosystem services of coastal habitats into the implementation of existing federal policies without statutory changes; doing so would increase the degree to which these policies consider the full economic and ecological impacts of policy actions.
ISSN:0892-0753
1521-0421
DOI:10.1080/08920753.2013.822294