Biomass Carbon Stock and Net Primary Productivity in Tidal Herbaceous Wetlands of the Conterminous United States

Product Description:
This dataset provides maps of peak biomass carbon stock (C) in gC/m2 and net primary productivity (NPP) in gC/m2/yr of coastal herbaceous wetlands at a resolution of 30 m across the conterminous United States (CONUS) for 2015. Aboveground, belowground, and total peak biomass C and NPP are provided for tidal herbaceous wetlands. Data is presented for 1. all herbaceous/emergent marshes, 2. palustrine emergent marshes and 3. estuarine emergent marshes.

Background:
Spatial assessments of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration in natural ecosystems are necessary to develop climate mitigation strategies. Regional and national-level assessments of carbon sequestration require high-resolution data available for large areas, increasing the need for remote sensing products that quantify carbon stocks and fluxes. NPP, carbon uptake and storage in vegetation, is fundamental to models of net carbon sequestration and net carbon export from an ecosystem (net ecosystem carbon balance). While biomass C stock and NPP map products for terrestrial ecosystems are available to support the growing effort to quantify net ecosystem carbon storage at regional and national scales, there was currently no conterminous U.S. (CONUS) biomass C stock or NPP maps for coastal herbaceous wetlands. This is why we created the maps presented here.

Map creation:
In this study, we used peak soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) values derived from Landsat 8 composites and 5 other vegetation indices plus a region variable to model total biomass carbon stocks (above- and belowground) in palustrine and estuarine herbaceous tidal wetlands. Our model was based off the aboveground biomass model of Byrd et al. (2018, 2020), and incorporating field and literature data on belowground biomass carbon and aboveground turnover rate of one crop per year to estimate total biomass C and NPP for all tidal marshes across CONUS.

References:

Byrd, K. B., Ballanti, L., Thomas, N., Nguyen, D., Holmquist, J. R., Simard, M., & Windham-Myers, L. (2020). Corrigendum to" A remote sensing-based model of tidal marsh aboveground carbon stocks for the conterminous United States"[ISPRS J. Photogram. Rem. Sens. 139 (2018) 255-271]. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 166, 63-67.

Byrd, K. B., Ballanti, L., Thomas, N., Nguyen, D., Holmquist, J. R., Simard, M., & Windham-Myers, L. (2018). A remote sensing-based model of tidal marsh aboveground carbon stocks for the conterminous United States. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 139, 255-271.