Carbon Neutral – Our Environment goes green….
August 29th, 2010
The Sierra Club of BC reports on Blue Carbon
With Accent Inns launching our new “Fish for the Future” program I was thrilled to read this new article put out by the Sierra Club of BC.
At Accent Inns we are always looking for ways to not only make our BC Hotels greener but also ways to help protect our communities deal with pollution and carbon issues right here locally. The Sierra club of BC recent article on Blue Carbon is a great example of how we can do something about carbon here in our own backyard and they are to be commended for their dedication to finding and suggesting solutions.
Estuaries, another key area for capturing Carbon.
The rich and vibrant estuarine world has long been treasured as a cradle of marine abundance— a crucial breeding and feeding habitat for invertebrates, fish, marine birds and mammals. Where rivers meet the sea freshwater, seawater and sediment interact with living organisms and light to form ecosystems of exceptional productivity.Unfortunately, our estuaries are among the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems on earth. Mangrove, seagrass and salt marsh ecosystems are disappearing in aggregate at rates from 2 to 15 times faster than forests. One third of their original area has already been lost, mostly in the past 60 years.
New research reveals an unlooked-for potential for mitigating climate change. Like terrestrial forests, these marine gardens capture and store immense amounts of carbon but much more efficiently: at rates up to ninety times the uptake provided by equivalent areas of forest. This “Blue Carbon” is stored in sediments where it is stable for thousands of years. British Columbia’s 442 estuaries have a combined area of 745 square kilometres (km2) and In B.C., roughly 400 km2 of salt marsh and seagrass meadows stash away as much carbon as B.C.’s portion of the boreal forest, and the equivalent of the emissions of some 200,000 passenger cars. In view of these facts, estuaries and intertidal zones need to be a priority for conservation, restoration and enhancement.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLLwZXgrzc4[/youtube]
This is just one example why all of us at Accent Inns want to do our part to support our partners in their work towards saving and preserving our environment for generations to come. The synergies around what our various partners (The Sierra Club of BC, Pacific Salmon Foundation, Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC, TLC) are doing to inform, protect and enhance our marine and watershed environments is just to amazing to overlook.
To learn more please follow this link to the Sierra Club of B.C. – Blue Carbon.