Unraveling the potential of seagrass and macroalgal ecosystems as climate change refugia

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is essential to slow down the velocity of climate change. Likewise, the complementary implementation of other mitigation and adaptation strategies is equally important to increase environmental, social, and economic resilience. In coastal areas, one strategy is to focus conservation and management actions on foundation species of marine macrophytes, such as seagrasses and macroalgae. First, the capacity of these ecosystems to store carbon in the long term (blue carbon) makes them important carbon sinks at global scales. Second, their capacity to enhance organisms’ resilience, by minimizing environmental stress through the generation of chemical habitats, makes them important ecosystems to consider as local ocean acidification refugia. However, the complexity and high dynamism of biogeochemistry in coastal seawater, and the scarcity of comprehensive studies, have created uncertainty regarding the generality of potential benefits. Thus, the role of seagrass and macroalgal ecosystems as climate change refugia or hotspots of carbon sequestration is largely unresolved. This talk will show a synthesis of the latter research on these topics and will give a glance at how these concepts can also be applied to seaweed aquaculture as an effective measure to fight climate change in coastal areas