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Foregone carbon sequestration dominates greenhouse gas footprint in aquaculture associated with coastal wetland conversion

Nature Food volume 6, pages 587–596 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Coastal wetlands offer large carbon sequestration benefits but their conversion to aquaculture systems could result in substantial carbon losses. Here we show that the conversion of Spartina alterniflora salt marsh to mariculture ponds in China generated a greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of 20.3 Mg CO2 equivalent per ha per year. Around two-thirds of the footprint can be attributed to foregone salt marsh GHG mitigation capacity, whereas direct carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions in mariculture ponds account for only ~10%, with the remaining ~20% arising from feed, fertilizer and energy consumption. Aquaculture can offer comparatively lower GHG footprints than other animal protein sources, such as terrestrial beef and small ruminants’ production on a kg CO2 equivalent per kg protein basis, but this assumption may not be accurate when considering landscape-scale changes in GHG budgets, particularly in relation to the expansion of aquaculture within blue carbon ecosystems.

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Fig. 1: Study area on the Yellow Sea, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China.
Fig. 2: Temporal variation of greenhouse gas fluxes in S. alterniflora salt marsh and mariculture ponds.
Fig. 3: Annual greenhouse gas emissions from S. alterniflora salt marsh and mariculture ponds with different culturing ages.
Fig. 4: The schematic diagram highlights GHG footprint associated with conversion of coastal salt marsh to mariculture ponds.
Fig. 5: Comparison of GHG footprint from aquaculture and meat production.

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Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions are present in the paper and/or in the Supplementary Information. Emissions factors for applied fertilizers, feeds and energy in Chinese aquaculture systems, and those for commercial feed ingredients, were primarily derived via the China Products Carbon Footprint Factors Database (CPCD) at https://lca.cityghg.com/. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Code used to reproduce findings of this work can be obtained via Code Ocean at https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.6642099.v2.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 42322709, 42177301, U24A20628), the Natural Science Foundation (BK20230050) and Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutral Science and Technology Innovation Project of Jiangsu Province (BK20220020) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (YSBR-089).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Junji Yuan, Yanhong Dong, Junjie Li, Deyan Liu, Tiehu He & Weixin Ding

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yanhong Dong & Junjie Li

  3. Co-Innovation Center for Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China

    Deyan Liu & Jian Xiang

  4. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

    Hojeong Kang

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Contributions

W.D., J.Y. and D.L. designed the research. J.Y., Y.D., J.L., J.X., T.H. and H.K. performed the data extraction and analysis. J.Y. wrote the first draft of the paper, with all authors contributing to the revisions.

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Correspondence to Weixin Ding.

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Nature Food thanks Shuijin Hu, Shuwei Liu and Nicholas Ray for their contribution to the peer review process.

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Yuan, J., Dong, Y., Li, J. et al. Foregone carbon sequestration dominates greenhouse gas footprint in aquaculture associated with coastal wetland conversion. Nat Food 6, 587–596 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01156-5

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