Arnaud, Marie, Lovelock, Catherine E., Maceiras, Marion, Thuong-Huyen, Dang, Robin, Sarah, Abiven, Samuel, Mishra, Amrit Kumar, Farooq, Syed Hilal, Bhadra, Tuhin, Felbacq, Axel, Marchand, Cyril, Bottinelli, Nicolas, Le, Thanh-Phong, Amir, Ahmad Aldrie, and Rumpel, Cornelia (2025) The nature of soil blue carbon varies across mangrove geomorphic settings. Communications Earth & Environment, 6. 743.

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Abstract

Mangrove forests store significant amounts of blue carbon, mainly as soil organic matter. Insights into mangrove organic matter are limited, despite its importance for understanding blue carbon accumulation and vulnerability to global change. Here, we quantified soil organic matter preserved through chemical recalcitrance and association with the mineral phase, as key factors influencing blue carbon persistence. We found that the nature of the soil organic matter varied with mangrove geomorphic settings. Delta settings were dominated by presumably the most persistent soil organic matter associated with minerals, while open coast karstic settings contained mostly particulate soil organic matter, likely preserved due to low microbial activity. Across mangrove soil depths, there was little difference in soil organic matter pools. The soil organic matter pool across mangroves’ geomorphic settings exhibited greater variation than that observed across all terrestrial biomes. These findings underscore the need to tailor mangrove conservation and restoration to geomorphic settings.

Item ID:	89053
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2662-4435
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Funders:	Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants:	ARC award FL200100133
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2025 01:32
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 30% 37 EARTH SCIENCES > 3702 Climate change science > 370201 Climate change processes @ 30% 37 EARTH SCIENCES > 3703 Geochemistry > 370304 Organic geochemistry @ 40%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1802 Coastal and estuarine systems and management > 180201 Assessment and management of coastal and estuarine ecosystems @ 100%
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