A hidden blue carbon sink in Nipa Palm sediment: A pioneer study of the Nipa Palm ecosystem in Trang Province, southern Thailand
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Abstract
This pioneering study on Nipa palm mangroves is demonstrated their importance as carbon sinks. In this work, sediment cores from a Nipa palm mangrove forest in the Trang River estuary, Thailand, a mangrove ecosystem that is found to be little attention which are utilised to investigate the dynamics of total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), soil organic carbon (SOC), and perform grain size analysis. Three sediment cores (KT01, KT02, and KT03; depths 76–82 cm) were analysed at 2 cm sediment intervals to determine their TOC, TN, C/N ratios, SOC stocks, and grain size. The findings indicated that the SOC stock of the three cores ranged between about 322– 355 Mg Corg ha⁻¹. The surface enrichment at KT01 (depths 0–10 cm) had much greater TOC (5.73–9.04%) whereas TN was similar throughout the whole depth for 3 cores (0.21–0.58%). A key observation at surface (0-10 cm deep) TN was 33-37% of the total TN, highlighting active nitrogen cycling near the root zone. The C/N ratio tended to fluctuate (14–24) with depth, indicating mixing between vascular pant debris and vascular land plants except at the layer 0–2 cm deep of KT 02 which was sourced from algae. The vertical distribution of TOC and TN tended to decrease with depth at KT0. It is noticed that carbon burial was suggested by mid-depth SOC maxima (depths 48–58 cm), whereas the deeper layers (depths 60–82 cm) retained approximately 30 % of total SOC. The grain size analysis of three sediment cores indicated that all samples were within the silt size fraction, mainly very fine silt, with no presence of sand or clay-sized particles. The information obtained from this pioneer study is offered baseline data for future comparison to other mangrove varieties.
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