My study wants to quantify the carbon sequestration in wetlands but my study site is not coastal blue carbon ecosystem just wetlands, should I still use the coastal blue carbon ecosystem model (because the example they used was wetland) or do I use the carbon storage and squestration model? Would like to hear which is more appropriate. Thank you
1 Like
Hi @reyesmariana, and welcome to the NatCap forum!
I’d say that you could use either of the Carbon models for that purpose:
The Carbon Storage model is extremely simple, it would provide snapshots of the wetland’s carbon stock under different scenarios, and take the difference between them to calculate sequestration. There is no modeling of plant growth, accumulation or loss, aside from the differences specified in the 4 carbon pools that you provide for each land use/land cover (LULC) type. So if nothing changes about the LULC class of the wetland over time, nothing changes in the model outputs.
Blue Carbon has a little more complexity. Along with initial carbon pool data for each LULC type, it allows you to specify carbon accumulation rates over time, and magnitudes of loss under different types of land use change. So for this model, even if nothing changes about the LULC class of the wetland, it can still accumulate carbon, according to the parameters you supply.
So which one to use depends on your analysis needs and design. Without knowing more detail about your study, I’d suggest looking into both, and particularly Blue Carbon - you’ll need to provide more inputs to that model, but it might be more flexible for your purposes.
~ Stacie
1 Like
Dear Stacie,
Thank you for your speedy reply for the carbon storage ans sequestration model you mention it doesn’t take into account the LULC changes, but I can see there is an option for the future Land cover (raster) was thinking that this can help us see if there is an incease in carbon storage in the future? Second how do you define changes in LULC class? is it when the LULC class may potentially be different in the future like the number of LULC class will be more? Second the Blue carbon takes into account carbon accumulation is this by the analysis year? Thank you in advance
Sincerely,
Mariana
Yes, the Carbon Storage model can take both current and future LULC rasters, and you’ll provide a table with carbon pool values for each LULC class contained in those rasters. The model will map the carbon pool values to each of the LULC rasters, producing current and future carbon storage maps. Then it will subtract the current and future maps to create a sequestration result.
You define changes in LULC class simply by assigning different LULC codes to the relevant pixels (the codes allow the table carbon pool values to be mapped to the LULC raster). You just need to make sure that all of the LULC classes represented in your current and future maps have corresponding values in the carbon pool table.
Yes, Blue Carbon accumulates annually.
~ Stacie