Commentary: Evaluating the role of seagrass in Cenozoic CO2 variations

Authors/Creators

Peter I. Macreadie, Edith Cowan University
Óscar Serrano, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Carlos M. Duarte
John Beardall
Damien T. Maher

Abstract

A commentary on Evaluating the Role of Seagrass in Cenozoic CO₂ Variations

by Brandano, M., Cuffaro, M., Gaglianone, G., Pettricca, P., Stagno, V., and Mateu-Vicens, G. (2016). Front. Environ. Sci. 4:72. doi:10.3389/fenvs.2016.00072

Brandano et al. (2016) sought to quantify the role of seagrasses in removing atmospheric CO₂ during the past 65 million years. To date, this estimate has been missing from the literature. Moreover, as the authors point out, there has so far been little attention paid to the role of calcium carbonate formation (CaCO₃; inorganic carbon precipitated by calcifying organisms) in seagrass carbon budgets; much of the literature has focused on organic carbon only. The authors conclude that seagrasses have had globally-significant impacts on atmospheric CO₂ fluxes throughout the Cenozoic era. While we appreciate the ambitious nature and difficulty of the study, we argue that the authors have made fundamental misconceptions about the contribution of carbonate production (calcification) and sequestration to ocean carbon budgets.

RAS ID

26255

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

8-29-2017

Location of the Work

Switzerland

Funding Information

Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (PM)

CSIRO Flagship Marine and Coastal Carbon Biogeochemical Cluster and an ARC DECRA Fellowship (OS)

ARC DECRA Fellowship (DM)

KAUST (CD)

School

School of Science / Centre for Marine Ecosystems Research

Grant Number

ARC Numbers : DE130101084, LP160100242, DE170101524, DE150100581

Grant Link

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP160100242

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE170101524

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE150100581

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

Frontiers Research Foundation

Comments

Macreadie, P. I., Serrano, O., Duarte, C. M., Beardall, J., & Maher, D. (2017). Commentary: Evaluating the role of seagrass in Cenozoic CO₂ Variations. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 5, Article 55.

https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2017.00055

Recommended Citation

Macreadie, P. I., Serrano, Ó., Duarte, C. M., Beardall, J., & Maher, D. T. (2017). Commentary: Evaluating the role of seagrass in Cenozoic CO2 variations. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2017.00055