Once contractual details are completed, the projects will set out to advance our understanding of blue carbon ecosystems and their role in climate mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity protection.
Blue carbon ecosystems, including saltmarshes, seagrass meadows, mangroves, macroalgae and mudflats, play an important role in capturing and storing carbon while supporting biodiversity, coastal resilience, and other ecosystem services. However, uncertainties remain around carbon stocks and fluxes, greenhouse gas balances, ecosystem vulnerability, and the effectiveness of restoration and protection measures. Addressing these knowledge gaps is essential to strengthen the scientific basis for climate and biodiversity policy, management and nature-based solutions.
The JPI Oceans Joint Action on Blue Carbon, operating originally as a Knowledge Hub, has since 2024 synthesised knowledge, identified research priorities and supported stronger links between science and policy. A ‘State-of-the-Art’ working group assessed current knowledge, which provided the scientific foundation for the Joint Call launched at the end of 2025.
The JPI Oceans Joint Call on Blue Carbon Ecosystems set out to expand scientific knowledge, improve methodologies and measurement protocols, and identify effective interventions to enhance the climate mitigation and adaptation potential of blue carbon ecosystems. With a total budget of €5.3 million, the call brought together funding from Ireland, Canada, Germany, Malta, Norway and Poland, as well as in-kind support from Greece. It was led by the Marine Institute in Ireland and is co-branded by the UN Ocean Decade.
Proposals were requested to address one or more of three priority areas:
- Carbon stocks and fluxes at local and regional scales, including the climate protection (or mitigation) impact of CO2 and of relevant non-CO2 greenhouse gases emissions such as methane and nitrous oxide.
- Blue carbon ecosystems’ resilience and vulnerability to climate change impacts, eutrophication, dredging, trawling, tourism, and other anthropogenic pressures.
- Effectiveness and scalability of blue carbon restoration and protection measures, including Nature-based Solutions.
From the 24 proposals received, four projects have now been recommended for funding. They are expected to begin at the latest in December 2026 and run for 3 years.
CARSAFE: Carbon sinks on subarctic shelves, fjords and estuaries: Temporal evolution and anthropogenic forcing
The shelves, fjords and estuaries of the subarctic have stored carbon for thousands of years, accumulating organic matter in seafloor sediments. CARSAFE will investigate the likely effects of climate change on these ecosystems, analysing sediment cores from sites across Scandinavia and eastern Canada to reconstruct how carbon burial rates have shifted over the last century. The project will produce the first standardised blue carbon burial rate records from the eastern Canadian margin and selected fjords in Labrador, Canada, and Norway. It will also examine related processes, including pelagic fluxes (which transport carbon across ecosystems), organic matter oxidation (which releases CO₂ and consumes oxygen), and hypoxia (oxygen-deprived conditions that harm marine life), as well as the resilience of the seafloor ecosystem under natural and anthropogenic pressures.
Recognising the importance of these findings for communities living on subarctic coastlines, CARSAFE will make results publicly available through an open-access Subarctic Blue Carbon Dashboard for scientists, policymakers and coastal communities.
Coordinated by Henriette Kölling (Kiel University), Germany.
Partners: Dalhousie University (Canada), Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada), Geological Survey of Norway (Norway), Silesian University of Technology (Poland)
C-SCALE: Constraining Carbon stocks and greenhouse-gas fluxes Across high-Latitude marsh Ecosystems
Salt marshes are effective natural carbon sinks, but their performance in cold, high-latitude environments is poorly understood, with global estimates heavily skewed towards data from temperate regions. C-SCALE will carry out a coordinated assessment of carbon and greenhouse gas dynamics across a latitudinal gradient from the Wadden Sea to Svalbard in the high Arctic, assessing how warming and sea-level rise influence the northernmost salt marsh carbon budgets. Complementary Canadian sites will serve as independent validation locations to test whether models based on European field data are transferable. Beyond measuring stored carbon, the project will quantify sequestration rates, track methane and nitrous oxide fluxes, and investigate soil inorganic carbon dynamics and alkalinity as an additional factor related to salt marsh carbon budgets. Moreover, field measurements of abiotic, vegetation and microbial parameters will be used to develop indicators for predicting carbon stocks, sequestration rates and greenhouse gas fluxes across remote regions.
Combining field observations, laboratory experiments and modelling, C-SCALE aims to substantially reduce uncertainties in high-latitude salt marsh carbon budgets and improve estimates of their climate change mitigation potential.
Coordinated by Peter Mueller (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau), Germany.
Partners: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland), University of Hamburg (Germany), McGill University (Canada)
BluePaths: Enhancing the science, policy, impact pathway for Blue Carbon in Europe
Blue carbon data across Europe is patchy, making it difficult to develop effective and transversal policies to protect and restore blue carbon ecosystems. BluePaths will target the most significant data gaps, improving completeness and comparability across existing datasets, and address persistent uncertainties around lateral carbon fluxes and carbon budgets. It will identify the physical and biological conditions that determine whether restoration efforts succeed or fail in support of evidence-based site selection and restoration design. BluePaths will also assess the response of blue carbon ecosystems to a range of stressors, disturbances and climate-driven pressures to enhance understanding of their vulnerability and inform targeted conservation efforts.
Working across Ireland, Germany, Poland, Norway and Greece, including outermost regions and overseas territories, the project will maintain strong links to national, European and international decision-makers to ensure findings feed directly into management frameworks and policy processes.
Coordinated by Grace Cott (University College Dublin), Ireland.
Partners: University of Galway (Ireland), Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (Germany), Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany), Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland), Institute of Meteorology and Water Management – National Research Institute (Poland), Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) (Norway), Møreforsking AS (Norway), Hellenic Center for Marine Research (self-financed) (Greece)
MAGIEC: Mudflats Across Gradients of human Impact and Environmental extreme: blue Carbon cycling
Unvegetated mudflats cover significant stretches of coastline on both sides of the Atlantic and may store considerably more carbon than previously recognised, yet they remain one of the least studied blue carbon ecosystems. MAGIEC will investigate how mudflat sediments sequester and retain carbon across a transatlantic network of sites ranging from heavily impacted to near-pristine. There, the project will examine the effects of stressors such as nutrient pollution, chemical contamination and extreme weather events, as well as the role of sediment mineralogy, microbial communities and invasive species in shaping carbon dynamics and ecosystem resilience.
With a combination of sediment biogeochemistry, greenhouse gas flux measurements and molecular analysis, the project will develop standardised protocols for measuring mudflat carbon stocks and work with coastal managers to translate findings into practical conservation and restoration guidance.
Coordinated by Maria Dittrich (University of Toronto), Canada.
Partners: Bluenose Coastal Action Foundation (Canada), Atlantic Technological University (Ireland), University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Oceanography and Geography (Poland)