Editorial: Carbon sinks in coastal wetlands: influences from multiple factors

Abstract

Coastal wetlands, such as salt marshes, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and mud flats, are highly productive and valuable for sustainable development. Commonly referred to as “blue carbon” ecosystems because of their relevance in the global carbon (C) cycle, they provide climate mitigation benefits and a wide range of ecological services, such as erosion control, biodiversity support, water quality protection, and C sequestration (Lovelock and Duarte, 2019 and Macreadie et al., 2021). Despite covering a relatively small area, coastal wetlands are estimated to sequester nearly 54 Tg C yr−1, thereby serving as an efficient and natural “C sink” (Wang et al., 2021)