Lecture Roundup: Jane Glavan (AGEDI) on Blue Carbon in the UAE
We recently had the pleasure of having Jane Glavan, Partnership Project Manager of the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI), walk us through what AGEDI does to help inform environmental policies, how the group put recognition on additional value of the ecosystems we love, and the importance of Blue Carbon.
The importance of the ocean to human life cannot be overstated, Jane began. Healthy oceans are key to 11 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including the elimination of poverty, addressing the gender imbalance, ensuring food security, mitigating climate change and more.
Globally, coastal zones support over 55% of the world’s population, but only account for 5% of world’s land mass, which places massive stress on them. In the effort to protect coastal areas in the UAE, one of AGEDI’s undertakings was to help further understand the value on nature as an asset by enumerating the ‘services’ that ecosystems provide, for instance drinking water, protection from erosion or storm surge, nursery habitats for fisheries, recreation and carbon sinks.
Globally, coastal zones support over 55% of the world’s population, but only account for 5% of world’s land mass, which places massive stress on them. In the effort to protect coastal areas in the UAE, one of AGEDI’s undertakings was to help further understand the value on nature as an asset by enumerating the ‘services’ that ecosystems provide, for instance drinking water, protection from erosion or storm surge, nursery habitats for fisheries, recreation and carbon sinks.
Once a value can be established for these services, governments can use this information to understand what benefits natural landscapes provide. Where AGEDI comes in is finding out what data is missing, and building models to understand how ecosystems impact each other, which means connecting scientists across many different disciplines, then building a comprehensive model.
Jane showed us the layers and layers of information that go into modelling ecosystems, which is crucial to showing decision makers why they are important. To build a habitat map of Abu Dhabi, AGEDI collected information about habitat conditions and biodiversity across the GCC, pulling in information from many areas, often with new technologies like virtual reality and drones.
A drone can provide a perspective that scientists do not normally see, which all goes into the model. Jane showed a drone’s-eye view of a mangrove forest, which helped form a picture of the health of the trees by measuring the intensity of light reflection from the plants. Healthy plants give off a different reflection than their unhealthy counterparts, which can give a snapshot of the ecosystem’s health.
It is to everyone’s benefit to maintain healthy ecosystems, because “habitats that are more robust obviously give more services,” Jane said. “But the more difficult part is intrinsic value,” or how the coastline is valued by the people that live there. Everyone can agree that one of the best things about living in Abu Dhabi is going to the beach, she pointed out. But how much is that worth to us?
AGEDI surveyed hotel owners and oceanfront businesses, asking “if for some reason you couldn’t access the beach for six months, how would that impact your business?” They determined that the value of water quality for beach recreation to hoteliers and beach goers for Abu Dhabi beachfront is 824 million US dollars per year!
Jane then moved on to the concept of Blue Carbon, a new science that focuses on coastal ecosystems like sea grasses, salt marshes, and mangroves, which all store carbon over millennia—carbon that is released if they are destroyed.
In Abu Dhabi, sea grasses hold the most carbon, because of their sheer extent, but old growth mangroves are crucially important as it takes over 40 years for planted mangroves to be able to store equivalant amounts, whilst the rich, sticky mud of cyanobacteria mats stores four times as much carbon as any other system.
The AGEDI team studied the UAE’s mangroves closely. Interestingly, although they are the same species—the grey mangrove, or Avicennia marina—they vary in appearance throughout the country, and the sites in which they appear are unique from a biodiversity perspective. Jane said that one site in Umm Al Quwain, the mangroves are tall and thin. In Ras Al Khaimah, one site has barnacles, which aren’t present anywhere else. Khor Kalba has the oldest mangroves in the Arabian Peninsula, at over 400 years old, and 3 times more carbon storage than all the rest of the regions.
In studying the ecosystem services, the group stumbled onto a finding that has contributed to international understanding of carbon storage, which is that sabkha, or salt flat, store high amounts of carbon underground. These calculations and the sophistication of the model have meant that Abu Dhabi is the first city in the world to calculate its ‘wetlands supplement,’ or how its Blue Carbon resources factor into global climate change.
As they progress toward understanding the value of the UAE’s ecosystems, how they interrelate, and how they contribute to or mitigate carbon change, the AGEDI team builds an arsenal of information for protecting them.
“It’s fun science,” she concluded, “but it’s science that’s impactful.”
Links from her talk:
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