Seagrass Blue Carbon Data Collection Cheat Sheet

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Seagrass Blue Carbon Data Collection 
Cheat Sheet 
 
In the Field 
 
Choosing a Site 
Any site with eelgrass will work great. Take a 
few sediment and biomass cores from different 
places in the meadow to get a representative 
sample. Don’t forget to take the latitude and 
longitude of your core and biomass locations 
using a GPS.  
 
Source: modified from Short et al. (2015)  
 
In the figure above, three transects (A, B, and C) 
are placed in a seagrass meadow. Along each 
transect, quadrats are randomly placed, and 
cores and biomass samples are collected from 
each. 
 
If possible, try to get a “reference” sediment 
core from a nearby site that does not contain 
eelgrass. Comparing the carbon storage in this 
core can show us how much extra a seagrass 
meadow can store vs a bare ecosystem! 
 
 
Sediment Coring 
Cores can be collected using a variety of 
methods. The simplest method, which works 
well for soft seagrass sediment, is called the 
push coring method. This method involves 
pushing a large tube (such as a 3”, ~1m 
Polycarbonate tube), sharpened on one end, 
into the sediment, capping it at the bottom, and 
pulling it back up. You want to push the core 
into the sediment until you can’t push anymore 
(we call this “depth of refusal”). Then you need 
to dig around the core and cap the bottom of it 
using a round, solid disk (soft practice hockey 
pucks work well!). 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Core Extraction 
Use a core “extractor” to push the sediment out 
of the core (i.e. the Polycarbonate tube), 1 cm 
at a time. To make an extractor at home, you 
can use: a metal pole (a bit longer than the 
length of your core); a wood base (to attach one 
end of the pole into); and another round disk 
(to attach to the other end of the pole, which 
pushes up from the bottom of the core). 
The disk of the extractor should fit snugly into 
the bottom of your core. You may need a slim 
metal disk to fit between the rod and the disk 
depending on the material of your disk. 
Slowly push the core up through the tube until 
1cm of sediment is present at the top of the 
core. You want to extract each sediment core 
1cm at a time onto a sterile surface. At this 
point, you want to take a measurement for the 
density of the soil, which will be important for 
your carbon analysis later.  
To do this, you’ll need to 
use a ring (of known 
volume) and press it into 
the soil (to calculate ring 
volume: 3.14 x radius of 
the cylinder squared x 
cylinder height). Taking 
this near the edge will be easiest. Carefully 
remove all the sediment contained in that ring 
and place into sterile sample bags or containers.  
Then, place the remainder of the sediment into 
another sterile container. Keep the containers 
in a refrigerator or in a cooler until you’re ready 
to analyze them and don’t forget to label them!  
Biomass Collection 
Place a quadrat of any known size (e.g. 0.25 m
2
) 
in random locations around the meadow, 
corresponding with your sediment cores. 

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