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. The aim of this work was to explore the feasibility of using plant functionaltraits to identify differences in sediment organic carbon (OC) storage withinseagrass meadows. At 19 sites within three seagrass meadows in the coastalwaters of Zanzibar, Tanzania, species cover was estimated along with threecommunity traits hypothesized to influence sediment OC storage (above andbelowground biomass, seagrass tissue nitrogen content, and shoot density).Sediments within four biogeographic zones (fore reef, reef flat, tidalchannel, and seagrass meadow) of the landscape were characterized, andsediment cores were collected within seagrass meadows to quantify OC storagein the top 25 cm and top meter of the sediment. We identified five distinctseagrass communities that had notable differences in the plant traits, whichwere all residing within a thin veneer (ranging from 19 to 78 cm thick) ofpoorly sorted, medium to coarsely grained carbonate sands on top of carbonaterock. One community (B), dominated by Thalassodendron ciliatum,contained high amounts of above ( 972±74  g DW m −2 ) andbelowground ( 682±392  g DW m −2 ) biomass composed of low-elemental-quality tissues (leaf C : N  =  24.5; rhizome C : N  =  97). Whileanother community (C), dominated by small-bodied ephemeral seagrass species,had significantly higher shoot density (4178 shoots m −2 ). However,these traits did not translate into differences in sediment OC storage andacross all communities the percentage of OC within sediments was similar andlow (ranging from 0.15 % to 0.75 %), as was the estimated OC storagein the top 25 cm ( 14.1±2.2  Mg C ha −1 ) and top meter ( 33.9±7.7  Mg C ha −1 ) of sediment. These stock estimates are considerablylower than the global average ( 194.2±20.2  Mg C ha −1 ) reported forother seagrass ecosystems and are on the lower end of the range of estimatesreported for the tropical Indo-Pacific bioregion (1.9 to293 Mg C ha −1 ). The uniformly low OC storage across communities,despite large inputs of low-quality belowground tissues in community B,indicates that the geophysical conditions of the coarse, shallow sediments atour sites were not conducive to OC stabilization and outweighed anyvariation in the quantity or quality of seagrass litter inputs. These resultsadd to a growing body of evidence showing that geophysical conditions of thesediment modulate the importance of plant traits in regards to retention ofOC within blue carbon ecosystems and cautions against the use of planttraits as a proxy for sediment OC storage across all seagrass ecosystems.

Seagrass community-level controls over organic carbon storage are constrained by geophysical attributes within meadows of Zanzibar, Tanzania