New world-first research has found that restoring Australia’s damaged wetlands and coastal vegetation would have the same effect on the fight against climate change as taking over four million cars off the road.
Researchers from Perth’s Edith Cowan University have helped an international team of experts pinpoint the volume of greenhouse gas absorbed and released by Australian marine ecosystems, known has “blue carbon.”
Published in the Nature Communications Journal, the paper, says Australia’s coasts are a global carbon storage hotspot, absorbing 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which is about the same as annual emissions from over four million cars.