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Updated: May 17, 2025

Assessment of Labile Organic Carbon in Soil Using Sequential Fumigation Incubation Procedures
Published on: October 29, 2016
Nonuniform organic carbon stock loss in soils across disturbed blue carbon ecosystems
Chuancheng Fu1, Shannon G Klein2, Jessica Breavington2
1Marine Science Program, Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division (BESE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. chuancheng.fu@kaust.edu.sa.
Abstract:
Conserving blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) has gained international attention in climate change mitigation, reflected in United Nations policies and voluntary carbon-offset projects. These efforts assume significant and uniform losses of soil organic carbon (Corg) throughout the top meter following disturbances, yet this assumption lacks robust empirical support. Here, we synthesized 239 paired observations of intact and disturbed BCEs globally. Soil Corg stock losses in the top meters vary widely: from -68.4% (agricultural conversion, ±13.4%, 95% confidence interval) to +0.8% (harvesting, ±46.2%) in mangroves, -25.9% (climate/hydrological change, ± 30.7%) to +48.6% (grazing, ±78.7%) in saltmarshes, and -34.2% (vegetation cover damage, ±22.4%) to -27.4% (dredging, ±33.6%) in seagrasses. Extensive disturbances deplete Corg down to 50-200 cm, while limited disturbances impact only the top 10-30 cm or resulted in negligible losses. This refinement contributes to improved global inventories of greenhouse gas emissions from BCEs, supporting abatement policy settings for nationally determined contributions commitments.
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