[OANNES Foro] There's now an app for mapping seagrass, the oceans' great carbon sink

Mar Ago 14 17:33:38 PDT 2018

There's now an app for mapping seagrass, the oceans' great carbon sink

by  <https://news.mongabay.com/by/basten-gokkon/> Basten Gokkon

14 June 2018 

https://news.mongabay.com/wildtech/2018/06/theres-now-an-app-for-mapping-sea
grass-the-oceans-great-carbon-sink/?utm_source=Mongabay+Email+Alerts&utm_cam
paign=4092845af9-mailchimp_climate_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e1ea8b
5f35-4092845af9-76256527

The launch of an online crowdsourcing database for seagrass hopes to breathe
new life into efforts to conserve the underwater flowering plants, which act
as both important habitats for marine species and a major store of carbon
dioxide.

Patchy mapping of seagrass meadows has hampered efforts to protect the
plants (which are distinct from seaweed) from threats such as coastal
development, sedimentation, coral farming and sand mining, according to
Richard Unsworth, a marine biologist at Swansea University in the U.K. and
co-founder of environmental charity <http://www.projectseagrass.org/>
Project Seagrass.

The group on June 4 launched  <https://seagrassspotter.org/>
SeagrassSpotter, a collaborative initiative that allows anyone with a camera
to upload images of seagrass sightings and tagged locations from anywhere in
the world. The online tool also provides species information to help
ordinary users identify the seagrass they find. The platform is accessible
via website or mobile app for
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.seagrassspotter.seagrasss
potter&hl=en_GB> Android and
<https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/seagrass-spotter/id1122588337?mt=8> iOS.

"We're asking people visiting the coast or going out to sea - for diving,
fishing, kayaking - to keep their eyes out for seagrass so that they can
take a picture [to] upload to our website," Unsworth told Mongabay. "The
more people that get involved the more likely we are to develop a better
understanding of the world's seagrass."

Seagrasses grow in shallow coastal regions, providing a crucial nursery
habitat for young fish of many species. Previous reports suggest that more
than 600 species of fish in Southeast Asia alone rely on these meadows for
their growth and development. Seagrass beds are also an important home for
marine invertebrates, such as sea cucumbers, prawns and crabs.

Some seagrass meadows also serve to store large quantities of so-called blue
carbon, the carbon dioxide absorbed by the world's oceans and coastal
ecosystems. It's been estimated that seagrass meadows may be able to store
<https://news.mongabay.com/2012/05/seagrass-beds-store-20-billion-tons-of-ca
rbon/> more CO2 in their roots than all the world's rainforests.

https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/06/14020250/Scree
n-Shot-2018-06-14-at-12.21.03-768x512.png

The online tool SeagrassSpotter aggregates reported sightings of seagrass
ecosystems from around the world to help in the effort to conserve the
underwater plants. Image courtesy of SeagrassSpotter.

https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/06/14020223/Scree
n-Shot-2018-06-14-at-12.49.31-768x512.png

The platform also provides information on seagrass species to help with
identification. Image courtesy of SeagrassSpotter.

 <http://biology.sfsu.edu/people/katharyn-boyer> Seagrasses are disappearing
at rates that rival those of coral reefs and tropical rainforests, losing as
much as 7 percent of their area each year,
<https://www.iucn.org/content/seagrass-habitat-declining-globally> according
to the IUCN.
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320711001327> More
than 70 species of seagrass worldwide cover a global area
<http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/methodology/components/seagrass-area>
estimated at up to 600,000 square kilometers (about 232,000 square miles) -
an area larger than the island of Madagascar.

"We increasingly know how seagrasses support biodiverse fauna but we know
little about how to manage them to be resilient into the future and how to
restore these systems once they've been lost," Unsworth said.

He pointed to Indonesia as an example of a seagrass hotspot, where the
dearth of knowledge about the plants could potentially lead to the
extinction of these underwater gardens across the archipelago.

Indonesia is widely considered an important country for seagrass
conservation. In 1994, researchers estimated the country was
<https://www.scribd.com/document/144086244/Ekosistem-Padang-Lamun> home to
30,000 square kilometers (11,600 square miles) of seagrass, perhaps the
world's largest concentration of the plant. But in June 2017, the Indonesian
Institute of Sciences (LIPI), a government-funded research agency, put the
country's seagrass cover at just
<http://lipi.go.id/berita/terumbu-karang-dan-padang-lamun-indonesia-masih-da
lam-kondisi-kurang-baik/18432> 1,507 square kilometers (582 square miles).

"Having worked extensively on seagrass in Indonesia since 2003, I see that
seagrass is largely not on the conservation radar," Unsworth said.

"When you visit marine parks and places with seagrass, its conservation is
commonly not included or just there as a token inclusion. The focus is
always on coral reefs, even though often the majority of the fishing effort
is on nearshore shallow seagrass."

At least
<https://ejournal.unsrat.ac.id/index.php/platax/article/viewFile/13228/12814
> two <http://repository.lapan.go.id/repository/2205-3365-2-PB.pdf>  studies
by researchers in Indonesia have attempted to map seagrass meadows in
certain locations, but both noted that nationwide mapping efforts were
practically non-existent.

https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2018/06/14020002/Scree
n-Shot-2018-06-14-at-12.20.34-768x512.png

A handful of seagrass meadow sightings in Indonesia have been submitted to
SeagrassSpotter. Image courtesy of SeagrassSpotter.

According to Unsworth, LIPI now runs a seagrass monitoring program, but it's
only on seagrass meadows in marine parks where threats aren't as prevalent
and widespread as in other, unprotected, coastal regions in Indonesia.

"Funding for projects by NGOs largely ignores seagrass or when budgets are
stretched, they always pull the seagrass component first," he said. "Having
met with fisheries officers, park managers and local government officials
over many years, my overwhelming opinion is that seagrass is not considered
to be of much importance."

A search of the academic literature on coral reefs versus seagrass in
Indonesia reveals that five times as many studies published about the former
than the latter in the period between 1970 and 2018, Unsworth said.

He also pointed to  <http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/7> dataset compiled
by the U.N. Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre
showing huge gaps where seagrass has been mapped.

"The gaps are places where the environmental conditions suggest seagrass
should be prevalent," Unsworth said. "This includes many areas where I
personally have observed extensive seagrass, such as Buton, Selayar, Central
Sulawesi."

The latest figures from LIPI indicate that
<http://www.oseanografi.lipi.go.id/haspen/booklet%20status%20lamun%202017.pd
f> only 40 percent of seagrass in Indonesia is considered in healthy
condition. Coastal land development, sedimentation, waste pollution, coral
aquaculture and sand mining are the top threats to Indonesia's seagrass.

Unsworth and his team of researchers
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29627551> published a report in April
that indicates 90 percent of the seagrass meadows they examined in Indonesia
had been extensively damaged and degraded over the past five years.

"Seagrasses in some parts of Indonesia are very well mapped, but across the
nation knowledge is very poor and this comes at an important time given what
we know about the losses of seagrass," he said.

Other countries, like Australia, have also reported findings of extensive
seagrass meadows in seabeds deeper than 20 meters (66 feet), but "next to no
deepwater seagrass has ever been documented in Indonesia," Unsworth said.

"This is probably because no one has ever looked for it," he said.

To date, SeagrassSpotter has collected more than 1,000 records of seagrass
around the U.K. and northern Europe. Globally, the group hopes to obtain at
least 100,000 records by engaging people from around the world to collect
data about seagrass in their locality. All collected data will be freely
available to the public.

"If people don't know where seagrass is and why it's of value," Unsworth
said, "then they won't take action to preserve it."

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