Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Vol 12 No 13
In this study, we provide an estimate of the quantity of organic carbon (OC) held within the surficial soils (top 10 cm and 15 cm) of Scotland’s extensive saltmarsh habitats. This work builds upon the Scottish Saltmarsh Survey (Haynes, 2016) by integrating the mapped extent of saltmarsh vegetation types with field-derived measurements of soil dry bulk density and OC obtained from a diverse range of saltmarsh soils across Scotland (Ruranska et al., 2020). This approach has enabled a new surficial OC stock estimation to be made for the soils within Scotland’s saltmarshes.
Data and Resources
Field | Value |
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Publisher | |
Modified | 2021-09-14 |
Release Date | 2021-09-13 |
Identifier | 0438e621-415e-4ed9-9156-f11d103f4146 |
Spatial / Geographical Coverage Location | Scotland |
Temporal Coverage | 2010-01-01 |
License | UK Open Government Licence (OGL) |
Data Dictionary | The Scottish saltmarsh survey (SSS) was a national survey which was completed in 2016 and details the areal extent of NVC classes across all saltmarshes greater than >0.03 km2 in area (Haynes, 2016). Field surveys for the SSS were undertaken between 2010-2012 by Nature Scotland (formerly known as Scottish Natural Heritage) on all saltmarshes > 0.03 km2 in size, with an additional 10 perched and 25 small marshes (<0.003km2) also included in the survey (Haynes, 2016). In recognition that the SSS took place some time ago, a ± 5% error has been applied to the areal extent of each NVC class and to the area of each saltmarsh as a whole, potentially accounting for possible erosion or accretion in the last decade (Ladd et al., 2019). By applying this error term, the uncertainties in marsh extent will be better represented in the calculations and propagated into the final soil OC stock estimates. |
Contact Name | Marine Scotland |
Contact Email | |
Public Access Level | Public |