Seagrass has the potential to be one of the world’s most effective sponges at soaking up and storing carbon, but we don’t yet know how nutrient pollution affects its ability to sequester carbon.
Seagrass has the potential to be one of the world’s most effective sponges at soaking up and storing carbon, but we don’t yet know how nutrient pollution affects its ability to sequester carbon.
In a pair of studies, U-M researchers evaluated the impact of nitrogen and phosphorus on seagrass, short, turf-like grasses that live in shallow, coastal areas. Examining data gathered from a plot of seagrass enriched with nutrients over a period of nine years, the scientists found that nutrients can increase seagrass’s ability to store carbon. However, in a second study, they also found that an overload of nitrogen could lead to increased phytoplankton growth, which can shade out and kill seagrass.
Both studies, published in Global Change Biology and Conservation Letters, respectively, were supported by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.
Jacob Allgeier, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, studies fish and seagrass and coral ecology in bays of the Bahamas and Dominican Republic. He noticed that seagrasses growing in bays overloaded with nutrients, mostly from human wastewater, quickly died off. Light couldn’t penetrate through the phytoplankton, which also proliferated under the high-nutrient conditions.
Read More: University of Michigan
Image: Jacob Allgeier, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, created a test plot of seagrass that he enriched with nutrients over a period of nine years in a bay in The Bahamas. (Image credit: Jacob Allgeier/University of Michigan)
