COASTAL BLUE CARBON

Coastal Blue Carbon is the carbon captured and sequestered by photosynthetic organisms and ultimately stored in the biomass, soils and sediments within and beyond coastal vegetated ecosystems, such as salt marshes, seagrass beds and mangrove forests, for periods of time relevant to climate change mitigation. These Blue Carbon Ecosystems (BCEs) may contribute to 50% of the carbon buried in marine sediments, while only occupying 0.2% of the ocean surface. Coastal blue carbon is increasingly recognised by international and EU policies as a key tool for climate change mitigation and coastal resilience. Among the scientific advances needed to ensure the effectiveness of policies promoting the conservation and restoration of coastal blue carbon ecosystems is the need to provide tools that can accurately estimate and monitor the evolution of these carbon stocks over time and over large areas in response to project activities and climate and anthropogenic threats. In particular, remote sensing methods, combined with ground truthing research and modelling, are becoming key to cost-effectively address this issue.

The aim of this Coastal Blue Carbon project is to develop novel and innovative high-quality EO-based products, indicators and methods that can be directly used by all interested end-users for the monitoring, restoration, and conservation of BCEs, including their inclusion into national inventories and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) towards achieving net zero goals.

The combination of the ESA SENTINEL programme (C-band and multispectral 10-60 m imagery every 5 days) with a very high spatial resolution (0.5 – 5 m) image database from the CNES SPOT-6/7 or PLEIADES satellites has much to offer for the monitoring of blue carbon ecosystems. In particular, this project will develop new blue carbon product prototypes: