At a glance
- South Australia’s Blue Carbon Strategy 2020-2025 aims to link coastal ecosystem restoration with carbon markets, research, demonstration projects, and coastal planning.
- Pilot projects show that reintroducing tidal flows by removing barriers such as seawalls can successfully restore carbon-rich mangrove and saltmarsh wetlands.
- South Australia is also trialling seagrass restoration, including a 10 ha pilot off Adelaide using hessian bags to anchor seedlings, with a larger 20+ ha restoration project now underway at Port Gawler.
Blue carbon pilots in South Australia
Blue carbon ecosystems in South Australia currently cover a million hectares, over 96% of which is seagrass habitat.
In its Blue Carbon Strategy 2020–2025, the South Australian Government pledged to take the lead in establishing a state-wide, evidence-based program of projects and research aimed at blue carbon ecosystem protection and restoration. The Strategy recognised that carbon markets could help to fund blue carbon habitat restoration, enabling the state to reap the broad environmental and economic benefits besides carbon sequestration that such coastal ecosystem restoration projects bring.
The strategy outlined four objectives: connect blue carbon ecosystem restoration to carbon markets and other finance mechanisms; deliver research to quantify blue carbon and co-benefits; identify and implement blue carbon demonstration projects; and integrate blue carbon into coastal policy, planning and management strategies.
a video about the blue carbon approach in South Australia.
Pilot projects show promise
A preliminary assessment of suitable blue carbon project types and locations found that removing barriers such as seawalls to re- introduction of tidal flows to create or restore mangrove and saltmarsh tidal wetlands is highly feasible in a range of locations.
A small demonstration project at the Dry Creek Salt Field, 30 minutes north of the Adelaide CBD adjacent the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary, has confirmed that this approach can successfully restore blue carbon tidal wetland.
A larger blue carbon demonstration projects in the same area of coastline, being undertaken as part of the federally funded Blue Carbon Ecosystem Restoration Grants programme, is now underway.
This $2.8 million project, led by The Nature Conservancy Australia, will include coastal restoration across 12,400 ha of carbon rich mangrove and saltmarsh wetland habitats within the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary.
As a part of the project, a Flinders University led research consortium will examine the project’s environmental and socio-economic benefits, developing cost-effective methodologies for assessing these benefits within an Environmental Economic Accounting framework..
Seagrass trialled too
South Australia is also piloting the restoration of seagrass habitat. Seagrass loss can be due to poor water quality and eutrophication – if these can be reversed, so can seagrass loss. Compared to mangrove and tidal wetland restoration, however, seagrass restoration has been more challenging and expensive.
In 2019, a $1 million state government funded seagrass restoration project used a locally developed technique of placing hessian bags on the sea floor to hold seagrass seedlings in place, to start the restoration of 10 hectares of seagrass off the Adelaide coast.
A larger seagrass project to restore more than 20ha of seagrass is now underway at Port Gawler, which is funded under the Commonwealth Blue Carbon Ecosystem Restoration Grants programme.
To cite:
This case study was prepared by NCCARF.
Please cite as: NCCARF, 2024: Piloting blue carbon ecosystem restoration in South Australia. Case study for CoastAdapt, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Griffith University, Gold Coast.