"New research shows the carbon absorbed by the Everglades is equal to 10 percent of the emissions coming from Florida roadways, but the watershed’s methane emissions complicate the picture."
"Restoring Florida’s fragile Everglades can help stem the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the global climate and contributing to hotter temperatures, rising seas and more damaging storms in this particularly vulnerable state, new research has found.
The research, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the freshwater marshes and coastal mangroves of the river of grass absorb some 14 million tons of climate-heating carbon dioxide annually from the Earth’s atmosphere. That amount is equal to 10 percent of the emissions coming from Florida roadways, said John Kominoski, a professor in the Institute of Environment at Florida International University and a researcher on the study.
“It’s almost like an investment in your retirement fund. You start to put it away slowly, and you don’t really understand the benefits,” said Kominoski, principal investigator of the federally supported Florida Coastal Everglades Long Term Ecological Research Program. “But over time the benefits emerge, and they are more than the sum of their parts. And that’s kind of what climate mitigation and climate sequestration are doing, not just locally, not just in the Everglades but across the world.”"
