A functional perspective on the factors underpinning biomass-bound carbon stocks in coastal macrophyte communities

Seasonality strongly affects short‐term C‐storage in coastal macrophyte communities

“…To appropriately characterize the strong seasonality with a marked seasonal succession in production and biomass (e.g., Rodil et al 2019), sampling was repeated four times (i.e., October, March, June, and August) at six soft bottom sites (dominated by different aquatic vascular plants) within a location (8 ha) via scuba diving. The spatial distance between sites ranged from 75 to 350 m, while the depth ranged between 1.8 and 3.0 m. Characterization of benthic biodiversity was based on a previous field survey (Lammerant et al 2024), where a sampling device composed of an octagonal metallic ring as the center point with eight diving reels attached to the center (creating eight wedge sections) was laid out in dense vegetation (see Rodil et al 2019 for details). This approach was repeated in every field survey at each of the six soft-bottom sites.…”

“…The amount of starch stored in plant leaves was highly variable, for example, C. demersum stored substantially higher amounts in comparison to other species (i.e., M. spicatum, S. pectinata, and P. perfoliatus), whereas P. perfoliatus did not store any starch at all. These differences in starch storage could be attributed to the variation in functional structure and life history strategies found among these species (Kautsky 1988;Lammerant et al 2024). Generally, plants are composed of a range of belowground and aboveground organs, whereas C. demersum is comprised entirely out of aboveground tissue, making leaves their main organ for storage of non-structural carbohydrate reserves and explaining the substantially higher amounts of starch (e.g., Best and Visser 1987;Esteves and Suzuki 2010).…”