Topic
Carbon uptake and storage by coastal ecosystems such as seagrass meadows, mangroves and salt marshes.
Researchers report that three drowned peat reefs off Mozambique, with peat up to 5,000 years old, host marine life comparable to a nearby coral reef. The paper says the peat's present-day carbon role is unresolved, and three sites in one archipelago cannot show how many such reefs exist.
Reality
Researchers at King's College London and Imperial College London pooled 423 studies and found most of 23 ecosystem benefits rise steadily with diversity. Species appear to stand in for one another less than ecologists assumed, so even small losses tend to cut what ecosystems provide.
Reality
St Andrews researchers disturbed fjord sediment under controlled conditions and found the loss concentrated at the head of the loch, where peatland runoff settles, which turns a general blue-carbon case into an argument about particular sites.
Reality
A new quality index sorts central and eastern Indonesian meadows into hotspots, coldspots and spatial outliers. What it measures is ecological condition, not stored carbon.
Reality
A mesocosm experiment found that 4 degrees Celsius of warming cut the hard-to-degrade share of seagrass dissolved organic carbon by about 28 percent on average.
Reality