The Amazon, Borneo, and Daintree are located in Asia. Many of the world's largest rainforests are known to us.
The world's largest span of forests is the boreal forests from Russia to Canada.
How many of us know about an underwater forest?
Huge kelp and seaweed forests are hidden beneath the ocean.
Few are given names. There are a lot of marine species in their canopies.
Australia and the Great African Seaforest lie off the coast of southern Africa.
There are a lot of underwater forests around the world.
New research has shown how productive they are. The world's ocean forests cover a larger area than India.
Climate change and marine heatwaves threaten these seaweed forests. They are able to grow quickly and sequester carbon.
seaweeds are the type of seaweed that forms the underwater forests. The sun's energy and carbon dioxide are captured by seaweeds.
The largest species grow tens of meters high and form forest canopies that sway as swells move through. A sense of constant movement is what makes swimming through one enjoyable.
Similar to trees on land, these seaweeds give a wide variety of marine organisms a place to call home.
Large species such as sea-bamboo and giant kelp have gas-filled structures that help them create huge floating canopies.
Strong stems are important for other species. Golden kelp on Australia's Great Southern Reef is one of the others.
The seaweed is one of the fastest growing plants on the planet. It has been difficult to estimate the size of their forests.
Satellites can be used to measure forests on land. It's much more difficult under the water. Satellites can't measure underwater forests where they are found.
Millions of underwater records from scientific literature, online repository, local herbaria and citizen science initiatives were used to overcome this challenge.
We found that the global distribution of ocean forests is between 6 million and 7.2 million square kilometer. The Amazon is smaller than that.
We looked at how productive the ocean forests are. There were no unified records. The seaweed growth rates were measured by scuba divers in hundreds of individual studies.
Ocean forests are more productive than wheat, rice and corn.
The areas with the highest productivity are in the tropics.
Ocean forests in these regions produce more than crops every year.
The findings are positive. The world's future food security could be met by using this immense productivity. Food production on land can be boosted by seaweed farms.
seaweeds are hungry for carbon dioxide They pull a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and the sea. Ocean forests may take up more carbon than the Amazon.
They could play a role in changing the climate. seaweed carbon needs to be locked away from the atmosphere for a long time in order for carbon to be sequestered.
Estimates show that seaweed could be sequestered in the deep sea. It's an area of intense research to know how much seaweed carbon is sequestered.
The extra heat trapped by the 2,400 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases has gone into the ocean.
The ocean forests are facing a lot of challenges. The loss of ocean forests in Western Australia, eastern Canada and California has resulted in the loss of habitat and carbon sequestration potential.
As sea ice and water temperatures warm, some parts of the world will see expansion of their ocean forests.
These overlooked forests are an important part of our coast. Most of the world's underwater forests are not well known.
Without significant efforts to improve our knowledge, it will not be possible to protect and conserve them.
They are Albert Pessarrodona Silvestre, Karen Filbee-Dexter, and Thomas Wernberg.
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is re-posted. The original article is worth a read.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
