WESTERN AUSTRALIA BLUE
Western Australia Blue
This 3.5-year program explores blue carbon opportunities in Western Australia (WA) through the conservation and restoration of coastal wetlands.
#WABlue is a Research & Development collaboration investigating the opportunities for blue carbon additionality in the State through three stages:
- Data Collection: Large-scale blue carbon coring campaign throughout WA’s coastline.
- Blue Carbon Modelling: How big is the opportunity for blue carbon in WA, and where to act?
- Identify potential sites for blue carbon restoration.
Stage 1: Large-scale blue carbon coring campaign
This first stage of the program comprises a large-scale field campaign to collect and analyse blue carbon cores from locations along the Western Australia coastline where data is lacking.
The figure below shows the distribution of blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses) along WA’s coast and where we sampled blue carbon data in the field campaign for carbon stocks and sequestration data. Vegetation data was also registered and will be used to estimate biomass stocks.
The sampling campaign was divided into two separate trips: Southern and Northern WA. The field team travelled 7900 km during two campaigns between February and July 2023, sampled 43 sites, and collected 124 cores and associated vegetation data. Karratha and Onslow were sampled in additional trips. Data collected is currently being analysed in the lab for Carbon-Nitrogen and Pb210 analyses. This information will be used to inform Stage 2.
Stage 2: How big is the opportunity for blue carbon in WA, and where to act?
The objective of this stage is to develop a first-pass assessment of potential areas suitable for blue carbon restoration, which will consider the following approach:
- Collate existing data on blue carbon stocks and sequestration data from previous studies and combine it with our field dataset.
- Model the distribution of carbon stocks at large-scale and understand the drivers of blue carbon variability in WA.
- Model blue carbon restoration opportunities under different management scenarios.
This stage will, for the first time, investigate the scale of blue carbon restoration opportunities in WA.
Stage 3: Identify potential sites for blue carbon restoration
In this stage, we will identify sites amenable for coastal wetland restoration under different management actions. Then, we will develop a pre-feasibility assessment to help decision-making towards blue carbon restoration.
Funding & Project partners
This project is funded by Chevron New Energies.
Contact
Prof Peter Macreadie (pmac@bluecarbonlab.org)
Dr Micheli Duarte de Paula Costa (micheli.costa@rmit.edu.au)
