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. 2011 Mar 29;6(3):e18311. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018311

Figure 2. Historical and future carbon capture and storage rates (CCS) of coastal vegetation.

Figure 2

(A) Extensive historical losses of seagrasses, mangroves, and salt marshes have reduced the CCS capacity of the coast. Points plotted represent the mean CCS for each habitat over time, and are bounded by lines of maximum and minimum rates of CCS published in the literature. Note that minimum rates for mangroves overlaps with the range of values for seagrass (depicted with purple shading). (B) Historical rates of CCS by seagrass are compared to rates under future scenarios of natural habitat recovery, as well as recovery combined with different intensities of restoration. Increasing restoration efforts to 100-times current levels will produce benefits to CCS that are similar to natural recovery alone. Rates of CCS following current trends in continued global seagrass decline are also plotted for reference. Data for calculating CCS rates were primarily sourced from [8], [9], [12], [13], [15], [16], [34] (also see Table 1).