sea4soCiety aims to develop innovative approaches to enhance the potential for carbon sequestration in coastal ecosystems in Germany and worldwide that are ecologically feasible, environmentally sound, legally and ethically unobjectionable, and based on societal requirements for additional benefits, including economic viability, as well as broad acceptance.

sea4soCiety will quantify the storage capacity of blue carbon in four coastal ecosystem types and compare it with the deposits of organic material in unvegetated marine sediments. The origin and stability of organic matter deposits, as well as their dynamics, will be analysed comparatively on the coasts of the German North Sea, the German Baltic Sea, the Colombian Caribbean Sea, andthe easter and western coast of Malaysia. Remote sensing is used for quantifying the aboveground biomass of vegetation in the study areas. Based on the characterization of the respective habitat, those currently unvegetated coastal regions that would be suitable for assisted expansion of coastal ecosystems (Ecosystem Design) will be identified. In this way, evidence- and scenario-based recommendations for policy- and decision-makers will be developed and subsequently scaled up to levels of national, international and global relevance, based on local field research.

The project is carried out in close collaboration between partner institutions, including ZMT Bremen, AWI Sylt, and the Universities of Oldenburg, Kiel, Hamburg and Münster.