Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Ocean, Coastal, and Earth Sciences

First Advisor

Richard Kline

Second Advisor

Abdullah F. Rahman

Third Advisor

MD Saydur Rahman

Abstract

The protection and enhancement of coastal ecosystems provides a number of benefits such as heightened biodiversity, increased fisheries, and enhanced carbon capture (Yeemin et al., 2024). The study of blue carbon ecosystems has expanded rapidly in the last two decades since the term was coined in 2009 (Lovelock & Duarte, 2019). The most well-known blue carbon ecosystems include vegetation-dominated ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, salt marshes, and mangrove forests (Howard et. al., 2014). Prior studies have overlooked Marine Animal Forests (MAF) ability to capture carbon, until recent studies on soft coral (Coppari et al., 2019) and sponge (Rix et al., 2020) carbon capture. The goal of the present study was to quantify the blue carbon in a nearshore artificial reefs MAF and to establish the carbon content of common taxa. The MAF within the Rio Grande Valley Artificial Reef (RGV Reef) included 8 major groups of snowflake coral, sea whips, sea fans, stony coral, barnacles, sponges, bryozoans, and biofilms. Carbon analyses combined with surface area coverage estimates demonstrated the MAF within the RGV Reef holds approximately 4.5 tons of blue carbon. The highest carbon concentrations were measured in soft corals and sponges at 10.41±1.10% and 5.46±1.60% by dry weight, respectively.

Comments

Copyright 2025 Michelle Kathryn King. https://proquest.com/docview/3240629637

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