“Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (Vis-Nir-Swir) as a Promising Tool for Blue Carbon Quantification in Mangrove Soils: A Case of Study in Tropical Semiarid Climatic Conditions” with Dr. Gabriel Nuto Nóbrega.

Mangrove forests are some of the most important forests in the world. Mangroves are uniquely adapted to acting as a middleman. They can deal with very high salinity and hide tides, but when the tide drops, they can deal with the low salinity. They act as nurseries for young birds, fish, and large, rare mammals like dugongs and manatees before they are ready to branch out into the ocean.  They also have the important ability to act as a carbon sink – they take carbon from the atmosphere and trap it in the soils. Dr. Gabriel Nuto Nóbrega  has been working with this aspect of mangrove soils since his undergrad days. He wanted to know just how much carbon mangrove forests have the capability to sequester. However, the act of doing so had proven tricky. Not only were traditional methods not reliably measuring the carbon, but they were leaving a toxic residue behind – not ideal in an important and sensitive ecosystem. His solution was DRS – diffusive reflectance spectroscopy, a technique that is not only friendlier to the ecosystem, but cheaper and easier than traditional methods.

Listen in to learn about:

• What makes mangrove soils different than terrestrial soils
• How DRS functions similarly to the human eye
• How Dr. Nóbrega has learned to avoid getting stuck in mangrove forests’ sticky soils
• All the work that goes into taking a mangrove soil sample from the forests into the lab – it’s not easy

If you would like more information about this topic, today’s paper is available here: dx.doi.org/10.2136/sssaj2017.04.0135

It will be freely available from June 22 to 6 July, 2018.

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If you would like to reach out to Gabriel, you can find him here: [email protected]www.twitter.com/GNNobrega

If you would like to reach out to other members of Gabriel’s research group, you can find them here: https://twitter.com/Tiago_OFerreira https://twitter.com/QueirozHM https://twitter.com/danilo_ichi

Resources

CEU Quiz: http://www.soils.org/education/classroom/classes/836 

Blue Carbon Initiative: http://thebluecarboninitiative.org/

Blue Carbon Portal: http://bluecarbonportal.org/

Department of Soil Science, University of São Paulo: https://www.researchgate.net/institution/University_of_Sao_Paulo/department/Departamento_de_Ciencia_do_Solo_LSO_ESALQ

http://www.en.esalq.usp.br/departments/soil-science

Field, Lab, Earth is copyrighted to the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.