Analysis of the potential for carbon sequestration and storage in different management scenarios by mangroves in the Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista do Litoral Paulista

• Grant number: 23/01938-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2023
• End date: April 14, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Biology
• Principal Investigator: Débora Martins de Freitas
• Grantee: Carlos Henrique de Andrade
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB-CLP). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus Experimental do Litoral Paulista. São Vicente , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/05654-3 - Assessment of priority areas for conservation and restoration of mangroves in the Baixada Santista Metropolitan Region, São Paulo, Brazil, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

Mangroves are characterized as tropical and subtropical coastal ecosystems, located in regions where there is a transition between fresh and salt water, which present several ecosystem services and enormous economic importance, considering that almost 80% of all global fish capture depend directly or indirectly on these territories. Another socioeconomic and environmental importance of mangroves is their high capacity to sequester and store carbon from the atmosphere, called in this case blue carbon. This sequestration of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere contributes to mitigating the effects caused by climate change. However, they are also ecosystems that suffer pressure vectors, mainly of an anthropic nature, capable of destroying or degrading them, consequently compromising their biodiversity and ability to sequester and store blue carbon. With this in mind, it is extremely important to assess its potential for carbon sequestration and storage considering different management actions, since this is an area that has been little studied. Therefore, the present project intends to evaluate this potential in the municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista with the objective of analyzing the space-time variation of carbon emission, stock and sequestration and estimating the difference between these rates in a temporal scale of 30, 50 and 100 years, under four possible management scenarios (conservation, restoration, alteration and climate change) using resources that include the MapBiomas platform, ArcGIS software, InVEST Coastal Blue Carbon model and RStudio software. The results of this study may support policies that will allow the conservation and recovery of biodiversity, biogeochemical functions and the economic value of mangroves, at the same time contributing to achieving goals related to the Ocean Decade, the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Decade of Restoration, as well as as the Sustainable Development Goals.