Seagrass blue carbon stocks and sequestration rates in the Colombian Caribbean.

Seagrass ecosystems rank amongst the most efficient natural carbon sinks on earth, sequestering CO through photosynthesis and storing organic carbon (C) underneath their soils for millennia and thereby, mitigating climate change. However, estimates of C stocks and accumulation rates in seagrass meadows (blue carbon) are restricted to few regions, and further information on spatial variability is required to derive robust global estimates. Here we studied soil C stocks and accumulation rates in seagrass meadows across the Colombian Caribbean.

Spatial and temporal changes of dissolved oxygen in waters of the Pajarales complex, Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta: Two decades of monitoring.

Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta lagoon complex, located in the Colombian Caribbean, is a highly degraded estuarine system, in which massive deaths of organisms have occurred since the 1990s, causing socioeconomic effects on the inhabitants, who are mostly artisanal fishermen. These deaths have been attributed to the deoxygenation of the water at night, as a result of the eutrophication of the system. To understand the variability of dissolved oxygen and its relationship with other water quality variables, the monthly time series collected between 2001 and 2019, in seven stations of the Pajarales Complex (western side of the estuarine complex), were analyzed.