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Soil carbon may be maintained under grazing in a St Lawrence Estuary tidal marsh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

O.T. YU  and
G.L. CHMURA
O.T. YU
Affiliation:
Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre and Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Québec, H3A 2K6 Canada Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, CW405 Biological Sciences Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E9 Canada
G.L. CHMURA*
Affiliation:
Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre and Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Québec, H3A 2K6 Canada
*
*Correspondence: Dr Gail Chmura Tel: +1 514 398 4958 e-mail: gail.chmura@mcgill.ca
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Summary

Production of belowground organic matter is critical to sustainability of salt marshes. It plays a role in vertical soil accretion, a process essential for salt marshes to maintain their relative elevation and persist as sea levels rise. This paper examines belowground production and soil carbon of a high-latitude saltmarsh in the St Lawrence Estuary (Québec, Canada), which had been subjected to six years of sheep grazing. In the seventh year, without sheep, organic matter production in grazed and ungrazed sections was assessed by examining harvests of plant litter, end-of-season standing crop, and the roots and rhizomes present in in-growth cores. Excepting salinity, porewater chemistry varied little. The grazed marsh had higher soil carbon density and belowground production, yet lower aboveground biomass. Grazing reduces plant litter and increases solar exposure, soil temperature (at this latitude, soil remained frozen until April) and evapotranspiration, thus raising soil salinity and nitrogen demand, the latter a driver of root production. Grazing may not be detrimental to soil carbon storage. Permitting certain types of grazing on restored salt marshes previously drained for agriculture would provide economic incentive to restore tidal flooding, because the natural carbon sink provided in the recovered marsh would make these lands eligible for carbon payments.

Keywords

carbon creditscarbon sequestrationecosystem servicesgrazingmarsh restorationroot productionsheep

Information

Type
EC Perspectives
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 312 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010

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