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Seasonal Species Variation of Sediment Organic Carbon Stocks in Salt Marshes of Tuticorin Area, Southern India

  • Ecosystem Services of Wetlands
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Abstract

Increasing attention in global blue carbon investigation in these contemporary times, salt marsh has the distinctive importance in coastal ecosystems. We examined sediment organic carbon stock in the four dominant salt marsh species areas viz. Suaeda maritima, Sesuvium portulacastrum, Arthrocnemum indicum, and Salicornia brachiata from Tuticorin, southeast coast of India in two seasons i.e. dry (July 2015) and wet season (January 2016). We examined above ground (AGB) and below ground biomass (BGB), sediment physico-chemical properties like pH, BD, composition, OM%, Corg%, C and N%, sediment organic carbon stocks (SOCS) and multivariate analysis on studied variables. Maximum AGB was recorded in A. indicum in both dry and wet season (10.91 ± 0.15 g/cm2 and 14.87 ± 0.68 g/cm2). The highest BGB was observed in S. maritima in both seasons, as 2.01 ± 0.35 g/cm2 and 4.49 ± 0.35 g/cm2, respectively. The OM percentage ranged between 4.13 ± .083 and 7.23 ± .088% and the highest was observed in the wet season from S. maritima. Sediment organic stocks (Mg ha −1) ranged from 8.42 ± .640 to 54.46 ± 1.46 Mg ha −1 reflects nearly 7 times higher than the dry season. The present study can be useful for the estimation of blue carbon budgets in tropical coastal ecosystem since this type was the first hand information from this area.

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Acknowledgements

The author T.K. is grateful to the University Grants Commission for providing UGC Dr. D. S. Kothari Postdoctoral Fellowship (F.4-2/2006 (BSR)/BL/1415/0226 dated 05.03.2015) and Bharathidasan University authorities for providing required facilities to carry out this work. A grant from MOST to Tan Han Shih (=HUD) is gratefully acknowledged (MOST 107-2621-M-037-001 to T.H. Shih). We also thank the Asia-Pacific Ocean Research Center of the Department of Oceanography [No. 76211194] in the frame of KMU/NSYSU cooperation for research support.

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  1. Department of Marine Science, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 620 024, India

    Thanamegam Kaviarasan, Murugaiah Santhosh Gokul, Santhaseelan Henciya, Krishnan Muthukumar & Rathinam Arthur James

  2. Department of Biomedical Science and Environmental Biology, Kaohsiung Medical University, No.100, Shin-Chuan 1st Road, Kaohsiung, 80708, Taiwan

    Hans Uwe Dahms

  3. Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, National Sun Yat-sen University, No. 70, Lienhai Road, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan

    Hans Uwe Dahms

  4. Department of Disaster Management, Pondicherry University, Port Blair Campus, Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 744103, India

    Shiva Shankar

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  1. Thanamegam Kaviarasan
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  2. Hans Uwe Dahms
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Correspondence to Hans Uwe Dahms or Rathinam Arthur James.

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Kaviarasan, T., Dahms, H.U., Gokul, M.S. et al. Seasonal Species Variation of Sediment Organic Carbon Stocks in Salt Marshes of Tuticorin Area, Southern India. Wetlands 39, 483–494 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-018-1094-6

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