Summary of biological blue carbon stocks in relevant habitats (figure 5.1) (restricted zoom)
SNH Commissioned Report No. 957. The blue carbon resources in each Nature Conservation Marine Protected Area (NC MPA) and Special Area of Conservation (SAC) in Scotland’s inshore waters are estimated from i) contributions of biological material to fixation of carbon, also referred to as production, and ii) contributions of geological sediments to blue carbon storage, following on from shelf-wide estimates in an earlier study (Burrows et al., 2014). The methodology has been developed here to allow local-scale estimation of habitat extent and provides estimates of blue carbon associated with habitats and surface sediments.