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SFU researcher wraps 6500 km journey to understand Pacific coastal blue carbon stocks
What can 6,500 kilometers of Pacific coastline teach us about the planet’s blue carbon ecosystems? Quite a lot, as research from SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM) reveals.
Blue carbon is the organic carbon captured and stored in coastal and marine ecosystems, and is a powerful ally in the fight against climate change.
These ecosystems sequester carbon faster than terrestrial forests and can lock it away for thousands of years. Seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and tidal marshes not only store carbon but also protect coastlines, support biodiversity, and sustain local economies.
Professor and former director of the School of Environmental Science Karen Kohfeld studies how climate change, both natural and human-driven, affects ocean-climate systems and the carbon cycle. She is internationally recognized for her work in Earth system science, paleoclimatology, and global carbon cycling. As a researcher contributing to SFU Climate Innovation, she also explores nature-based solutions to adapt to and mitigate climate impacts.
Kohfeld leads the Climate, Oceans, and Paleo-Environments (COPE) Laboratory, part of the REM graduate program. The interdisciplinary team comprises climatology, paleo-oceanography, Earth system science, and geochemistry.
The lab recently partnered with the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group, and with researchers across North America and the Pacific for a landmark study. Over several years, they sampled blue carbon stocks along 6,500 kilometres of coastline, from the Gulf of Alaska to Mexico.
Kohfeld and her students, Hasini Basnayake, Stephen G. Chastain, Maija Gailis, Aimee E. McGowan, and Victoria R. (Postlethwaite) Lamothe, have so far published four papers highlighting data gathered from Pacific coastal areas, and providing first estimates of how much blue carbon is stored there.
A compilation of these findings published in Blue Carbon Stocks Along the Pacific Coast of North America Are Mainly Driven by Local Rather Than Regional Factors, ranked in the top five per cent of SFU research outputs on Altmetric in 2025.
Understanding how soil carbon stocks differ across various coastal conditions will help incorporate blue carbon information into planning and decision-making in coastal conservation and restoration efforts.
As coastal areas become increasing susceptible to flooding and storm surges, there is a growing interest in how nature-based solutions can help mitigate and adapt to climate change.
We spoke with professor Kohfeld about her research.
What did your study reveal about blue carbon ecosystems along the Pacific coast?
We found that coastal ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, salt marshes, mangroves and tidal wetlands efficiently accumulate and store organic carbon in their sediments. Interestingly, the amount of carbon stored—what we call “carbon stock”—varies more by local factors like elevation and plant type than by broad regional climate differences.
Mangroves in Mexico and tidal swamps in the Pacific Northwest had the highest carbon stocks, thanks to their woody vegetation. Tideflats (unvegetated areas) stored as much carbon as seagrass meadows, while salt marshes (which are important in Canada) were intermediate between seagrass meadows and mangroves.
How can these findings inform conservation and restoration efforts?
We know that blue carbon ecosystems provide important habitat for many species, and being able to quantify the carbon storage—both the stocks and the accumulation rates—provides another strong argument for why we need to conserve them.
Interestingly, Canada has a “no net loss” policy in place, which means that when coastal development occurs, wetland areas that are degraded or lost have to be replaced by equivalent habitat. This policy has traditionally focused on biodiversity and habitat and unfortunately not carbon.
Carbon can accumulate over hundreds to thousands of years but then be eliminated or released from the system rather instantaneously, thus making “no net loss” really challenging if carbon is considered! Canada is increasingly mentioning carbon storage in its environmental management but as far as I can tell, carbon is still not explicitly considered in wetland management—although it could be.
Coordinating research across 6,500 kilometers of coastline sounds challenging. How did you manage it?
Yes, this type of research requires a very dedicated coordinator which we had in Chris Janousek, from Oregon State University. Chris coordinated the data collection over several years and even held virtual writing meetings so that people all along the coast could participate. This paper took many years and a herculean effort from several people.
I got involved with the work during the pandemic, when my research group joined the ongoing Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Working Group. This group brought together blue carbon researchers for regular virtual meetings to discuss and showcase new results on blue carbon research and policy along the Pacific coast. This paper was an outgrowth of those meetings and also of the Northeast Pacific Blue Carbon Database.
Your research group completed a series of four papers on Nature-Based Solutions to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. What are we learning about the role of blue carbon in helping mitigate the effects of climate change?
We have learned several important things through this work. First, blue carbon is not a panacea for solving climate change. It is only part of a bigger solution that requires us to shift towards zero-carbon energy, transportation and agriculture.
Second, not all blue carbon ecosystems store carbon equally. The ecosystems in Canada store less carbon per unit area than those found in the tropics and subtropics, largely because of the different species we have in higher latitudes, but also probably because of the geomorphology of our Pacific coast, where the depth of carbon storage is shallower.
Even though these ecosystems are important for carbon storage, we also need to remember their importance holistically. When we conserve blue carbon ecosystems, we are also preserving habitat, and biodiversity, while providing a whole host of other ecosystem services such as water purification and coastal protection against storms.
Tell us about some of the opportunities to conduct research as a student in the School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM), and in the Faculty of Environment.
One reason so many students enjoy working in REM is because it is a mix of fieldwork, laboratory work, and the policy implications have captured their imagination and excitement. My research group is unfortunately not accepting any more students, as I have decided to retire at the end of 2026, but there are several opportunities to understand carbon cycling and climate change at SFU.
For example, Shawn Chartrand in Environmental Science (EVSC) is interested in salt marsh restoration in Pitt Meadows, and Jessica Pilarczyk from EVSC is looking at long-term changes in salt marsh habitats in response to coastal disturbances such as tsunamis.
Bing Lu in Geography is working on remote sensing of blue carbon ecosystems in Canada and beyond. Sian Kou-Giesbrecht (REM) is looking at carbon and nutrient cycling in the terrestrial biosphere. There is a whole world of fascinating opportunities within the Faculty of Environment.
Any final thoughts as you wrap up your research group this year?
First of all, shout out to my colleague Marlow Pellatt from Parks Canada and REM, as together we have supervised numerous students studying blue carbon on Canada’s Pacific coast. When we started this work in 2016, extremely little was known about blue carbon in Canada—from how much carbon is stored to how extensive the ecosystems are—and unfortunately mapping is still very poor.
Over the past decade, many amazing students have put a real dent in our understanding of the area and the amount of carbon being stored in seagrass meadows and salt marshes, mostly on the Pacific coast but also in Atlantic Canada. I am grateful to have worked with each of them, and I know they will continue to make important contributions to research and environmental management.
For more, visit:
- The Climate, Oceans, and Paleo-Environments (COPE) Lab
- Professor Kohfeld’s Research Expertise Engine profile
- The COPE Lab series: Nature-Based Solutions for Coastal Flood Resilience: Opportunities, Challenges, and Adaptation to Climate Change.
The COPE Lab series on blue carbon:
- Low blue carbon storage in eelgrass (Zostera marina) meadows on the Pacific Coast of Canada
- Quantifying blue carbon for the largest salt marsh in southern British Columbia: implications for regional coastal management
- Quantification of blue carbon in salt marshes of the Pacific coast of Canada
- Spatial and temporal variability in blue carbon accumulation in the largest salt marsh in British Columbia, Canada