On the second anniversary of UQ’s Centre for Marine Science Professor Carlos Duarte is giving a special seminar on the role seagrass meadows  in mitigating the effects of climate change.  Having just returned from Brisbane, our research group will miss the opportunity to hear this wonderful seminar.  But it’s worth adding our voices to Prof. Duarte’s when he reminds us that “seagrass meadows are important ecosystems in the coastal ocean, but….are in global decline….they perform important functions, which are relevant to mitigate climate change and adapt locally to climate change.”

That’s right, seagrass meadows can counteract ocean acidification (well, during the daytime anyway).  An excellent example of this is a recent paper by Richard Unsworth and coworkers.  This is one of our recent favorites because it describes in detail what we observe each summer when we deply our FOCE system in seagrass patches and monitor CO2 and pH inside and outside those areas.  This figure is from their open acccess paper in Environmental Research Letters.  The link follows. 

Tropical seagrass meadows modify seawater carbon chemistry: implications for coral reefs impacted by ocean acidification

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/2/024026/article