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The second Southern California site the Paytan Lab will monitor is Los Cerritos Wetlands, which is in the beginning stages of restoration. (Courtesy of Adina Paytan, photo by Marco Montemayor)<\/p>\nSANTA CRUZ \u2014 A research group out of UC Santa Cruz is taking their wetland monitoring work down to Southern California. The new data will strengthen our understanding of how restored wetlands keep carbon out of the atmosphere, and could even inform state policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s more carbon sequestered per area in wetlands than in tropical Amazon forests,\u201d said Adina Paytan, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at UCSC. Paytan is leading the monitoring project at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge and the Los Cerritos Wetlands in Southern California.<\/p>\n
Paytan\u2019s lab studies biogeochemistry and chemical oceanography, including atmospheric microplastics and the impacts of climate change on coral reefs. The lab members also study wetland dynamics and how vegetation in these environments absorbs greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane from the atmosphere and keeps them buried for hundreds or thousands of years.<\/p>\n
Since 2022, the lab has been monitoring both healthy and degraded wetlands in the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve in Moss Landing. Part of their goal is to see how carbon sequestration improves when the saltwater marshes are restored. This kind of monitoring has been more common in Northern California, in places like the Bay Area\u2019s San Joaquin Delta, Paytan said. There has been much less data collected in Southern California.<\/p>\n
To fill that gap and get a better understanding of wetlands across the state, Paytan and some of her lab members have partnered with the California Air Resources Board and AmeriFlux to set up monitoring stations in two Orange County wetlands.<\/p>\n
For at least the next three years, Paytan and her team will monitor two very different wetlands. The first, Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, is a pristine, well-preserved wetland. The second, nearby Los Cerritos Wetlands, is degraded and in the beginning stages of a restoration project. That restoration is extensive, and includes removing invasive vegetation, opening channels to bring seawater back into the tidal wetlands, and plant new vegetation, which will allow for carbon sequestration.<\/p>\n
The second Southern California site the Paytan Lab will monitor is Los Cerritos Wetlands, which is in the beginning stages of restoration. (Courtesy of Adina Paytan, photo by Marco Montemayor)<\/p>\n
In each wetland, Paytan and her team set up devices called eddy covariance towers, which sit in the marsh. On top are instruments that take measurements every 15 seconds, cataloguing the carbon dioxide and methane in the air. By combining these measurements with other data such as wind speeds to calculate how much carbon is being released and sequestered by the marsh\u2019s vegetation. The goal, Paytan said, is to understand how restoration work at Los Cerritos Wetlands will impact its ability to sequester carbon. Seal Beach will serve as a reference point for a healthy wetland\u2019s carbon sequestration.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, similar work at Elkhorn Slough has shown encouraging results. Over the course of the study, Paytan said, the part of the slough that is undergoing restoration has already gone from a carbon source to a carbon sink \u2014 meaning it now removes more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it emits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is looking really good,\u201d Paytan said. \u201cIt\u2019s really exactly what we expected, but faster.\u201d<\/p>\n