NSW Blue Carbon Compatibility under 2017 Landuse

Brief description

Human activities in coastal landscapes also exert both direct and indirect pressures on blue carbon (McLeod et al., 2011). Rogers et al. (2019) accounted for this pressure using land-use mapping, with the premise being that natural landscapes are more compatible with storage, preservation, and generation of blue carbon, whilst intensive land-use activities are less compatible. They proposed that this approach partly accounts for socio-economic factors that influence blue carbon. In this study, 2017 land-use mapping was reclassified based on perceived present-day compatibility with blue carbon to generate a blue carbon compatibility (BCC) raster dataset.


_McLeod, E., Chmura, G.L., Bouillon, S., Salm, R., Björk, M., Duarte, C.M., Lovelock, C.E., Schlesinger, W.H., and Silliman, B.R. (2011). A blueprint for blue carbon: toward an improved understanding of the role of vegetated coastal habitats in sequestering CO2. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9, 552-560._

_Rogers, K., Macreadie, P.I., Kelleway, J.J., and Saintilan, N. (2019b). Blue carbon in coastal landscapes: a spatial framework for assessment of stocks and additionality. Sustainability Science 14, 453-467._