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Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom
The spatial extent of seagrass is poorly mapped, and knowledge of historical loss is limited. Here, we collated empirical and qualitative data using systematic review methods to provide unique analysis on seagrass occurrence and loss in the United Kingdom. We document 8,493 ha of recently mapped sea...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7970192/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33747011 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.629962 |
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author | Green, Alix E. Unsworth, Richard K. F. Chadwick, Michael A. Jones, Peter J. S. |
author_facet | Green, Alix E. Unsworth, Richard K. F. Chadwick, Michael A. Jones, Peter J. S. |
author_sort | Green, Alix E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The spatial extent of seagrass is poorly mapped, and knowledge of historical loss is limited. Here, we collated empirical and qualitative data using systematic review methods to provide unique analysis on seagrass occurrence and loss in the United Kingdom. We document 8,493 ha of recently mapped seagrass in the United Kingdom since 1998. This equates to an estimated 0.9 Mt of carbon, which, in the current carbon market represents about £22 million. Using simple models to estimate seagrass declines triangulated against habitat suitability models, we provide evidence of catastrophic seagrass loss; at least 44% of United Kingdom’s seagrasses have been lost since 1936, 39% since the 1980’s. However, losses over longer time spans may be as high as 92%. Based on these estimates, historical seagrass meadows could have stored 11.5 Mt of carbon and supported approximately 400 million fish. Our results demonstrate the vast scale of losses and highlight the opportunities to restore seagrass to support a range of ecosystems services. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7970192 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-79701922021-03-19 Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom Green, Alix E. Unsworth, Richard K. F. Chadwick, Michael A. Jones, Peter J. S. Front Plant Sci Plant Science The spatial extent of seagrass is poorly mapped, and knowledge of historical loss is limited. Here, we collated empirical and qualitative data using systematic review methods to provide unique analysis on seagrass occurrence and loss in the United Kingdom. We document 8,493 ha of recently mapped seagrass in the United Kingdom since 1998. This equates to an estimated 0.9 Mt of carbon, which, in the current carbon market represents about £22 million. Using simple models to estimate seagrass declines triangulated against habitat suitability models, we provide evidence of catastrophic seagrass loss; at least 44% of United Kingdom’s seagrasses have been lost since 1936, 39% since the 1980’s. However, losses over longer time spans may be as high as 92%. Based on these estimates, historical seagrass meadows could have stored 11.5 Mt of carbon and supported approximately 400 million fish. Our results demonstrate the vast scale of losses and highlight the opportunities to restore seagrass to support a range of ecosystems services. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7970192/ /pubmed/33747011 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.629962 Text en Copyright © 2021 Green, Unsworth, Chadwick and Jones. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Plant Science Green, Alix E. Unsworth, Richard K. F. Chadwick, Michael A. Jones, Peter J. S. Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title | Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title_full | Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title_fullStr | Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title_full_unstemmed | Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title_short | Historical Analysis Exposes Catastrophic Seagrass Loss for the United Kingdom |
title_sort | historical analysis exposes catastrophic seagrass loss for the united kingdom |
topic | Plant Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7970192/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33747011 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.629962 |
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