Miguel Clüsener-Godt – författare

This book is the sixth and final volume in the Tasks for Vegetation Science book series, and it concludes the most comprehensive scientific documentation dealing with hypersaline ecosystems of the world.

Blue carbon ecosystems are of tremendous value toward the utilization of high-salinity water, such as seawater, as well as hyper-saline soils, and salt-tolerant biota for the production of biomass, for food, feed, fiber, fuel, other economic purposes, and carbon sequestration.

In order to achieve the 17 SDGs, the scientific research into blue carbon ecosystems is an absolutely important element.

Moreover, monitoring is needed, as well as the conservation of the remaining blue carbon ecosystems, and the restoration of lost habitat. The book will provide comprehensive scientific documentation inspiring the way forward on how to utilize saline resources in the best interest of humanity. It will try to foster the academic research and networking for land-users, politicians, development banks, innovative farmers, investors, energy- producers, and carbon-off-setters.

The papers presented in this book emanate from a conference held at the Yokohama National University (Japan) in January 2023.

Sustainable development is the key for the survival in 21st century. The natural resources are finite and cannot be used with impunity because we are the custodian of these resources and have responsibility to pass these to the next generation. This monumental task requires several major commitments and most important of them is to arrest population explosion which has already reached seven billion. Natural resources like air to breath, food to eat, and water to drink, and fossil fuel to maintain this life style are being overexploited. Unrestrained consuming culture will accelerate undesired situation. This situation will have more dire consequences in resource limited ecosystems like dry lands. Given the severe scarcity of water, ever increasing population and soil salinization out of the box solutions for the provision of food and clean energy is required to spare meager fresh water resources for conventional agriculture. This volume contains a number of articles dealing with halophyte ecology, bio-geography, ecophysiology, hyper-saline soils, biofuels, biosaline agriculture, biosaline landscaping, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity. It also contains the communication of innovative ideas, such as the research into floating mangroves, seagrass terraces, as well as a World Halophyte Garden containing all known salt-tolerant plant species. It is hoped that the information provided will not only advance vegetation science, but that it will truly generate more interdisciplinarity, networking, awareness, and inspire farmers, and agricultural and landscaping stakeholders to seriously engage in halophyte cash crop production in coastal hyper-saline areas.