Chapter 1 About the Report

The goal of this report is to deliver a top-level synthesis on the state of Blue Carbon data at the level of specific U.S. States. Blue carbon, is defined here as carbon stored in coastal soils that is largely fixed and stored in the same location. This report contains three components: (1) a state-by-state inter-comparison of soil carbon stock data available through the Coastal Carbon Atlas and Coastal Carbon Library, which are products built and maintained by the Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network hosted at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center; (2) detailed state-by-state reports for a subset of states identified by Pew that add more context on existing and forthcoming soils data (California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington); (3) a brief summary of local-scale mapping efforts and programs that improve upon products and approaches used in this report.