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Foreword
Tomohiro Kuwae and Masakazu Hori’s Blue Carbon in Shallow Coastal Ecosystems:
Carbon Dynamics, Policy, and Implementation is a major contribution to blue carbon science, providing a solid reference source to those starting to consider this
important aspect of environmental sciences. Most importantly, this book provides a
unique effort to broaden the scope of blue carbon by also addressing nonconventional blue carbon ecosystems, such as macroalgal stands and corals, with a rich
suite of examples from a range of coastal ecosystems in Japan. As a unique contribution, the contributing authors integrate the fluxes of CO 2 that these coastal habitats support at the global scale for the first time, a prerequisite to evaluate the
efficiency of various policy actions to strengthen the role of blue carbon ecosystems
in climate change mitigation. I strongly recommend this book to students and scholars interested in climate change and the role that conservation and restoration of
coastal ecosystems may play in mitigating climate change.
Professor of Marine Science, Red Sea Research Center
Carlos M. Duarte
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology,
Thuwal, Saudi Arabia