Nov. 13, 2024 - If we want to protect ecosystems, try protecting the surf breaks.
That鈥檚 the gist of a 2021 research study, 鈥淐onservation Opportunities Arise from the Co-Occurrence of Surfing and Key Biodiversity Areas鈥 led by (华体会) Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Resource Management (ESRM), Dan Reineman.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a conservation opportunity 鈥榯wo-for鈥 here,鈥 Reineman said. 鈥淲e found that many of the world鈥檚 surf breaks are located in the same places as critical, but unprotected, ecosystems. Surfing - for recreation and tourism - provides an additional incentive to protect both.鈥
Reineman鈥檚 research inspired another study led by Oregon State University Assistant Professor of Forest Ecosystems & Society Jacob Bukoski, who discovered one more major benefit to protecting the surf breaks: trapping carbon.
鈥淒r. Bukoski reached out to me and said, 鈥業鈥檓 interested in replicating your original study, but adding information about important stores of carbon around the world,鈥欌 Reineman said. 鈥淪o I joined the team and we examined this additional co-benefit of, not only protecting surf breaks and ecosystems, but also keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.鈥
Bukoski, Reineman, and their collaborators found that these so-called 鈥渟urf ecosystems鈥 did indeed contain large amounts of carbon鈥88 million metric tons of carbon鈥攖hat, once released, would be almost impossible to re-capture.
鈥淚f you destroy these ecosystems, there鈥檚 no way that you could ever regrow the forest or restore the mangroves by 2050,鈥 Bukoski told Bloomberg.com. 鈥淪o you can essentially consider that carbon as irrecoverable for climate mitigation purposes.鈥
Coastal watersheds and nearshore marine ecosystems, like mangroves and salt marshes, store large amounts of carbon in soil, sediment and biomass (living organisms). These ecosystems are also important for the biodiversity they nurture. Whether policymakers are conservation-minded or motivated by the tourism economy, if we protect these important ecosystems, the study showed, we can help fight climate change in a significant way.
Bukoski and his colleagues used an existing global database of irrecoverable carbon deposits and overlaid it with the locations of 4,830 surf breaks in 113 countries. Bukoski鈥檚 study found that, globally, an estimated 88.3 million metric tons of irrecoverable carbon was stored less than a mile from a surf spot.
Of this, 17.2 million metric tons are found in Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA)s without any current, formal measures of protection. In the United States, expanding protections could keep 13.7 million metric tons out of the atmosphere - a larger opportunity than any other country.
鈥淚t鈥檚 exciting to see scholarly interest in surf conservation growing, and it鈥檚 always great to see someone building on your own work and taking it in new directions,鈥 Reineman said.