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Temperature-driven decline in recalcitrant dissolved organic carbon weakens coastal macrophyte’s blue carbon storage potential
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  • Published: 02 April 2026

Temperature-driven decline in recalcitrant dissolved organic carbon weakens coastal macrophyte’s blue carbon storage potential

  • Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-52351,
  • Tomás Azcárate-García2,3,
  • Luis Gonzalo Egea  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2233-34261,
  • Xosé Antón Álvarez-Salgado  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2387-92014,
  • Hauke Reuter  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-92445,
  • Fernando Guillermo Brun1 na1 &
  • …
  • Pedro Beca-Carretero4,5 na1 

Communications Earth & Environment , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Carbon cycle
  • Ecosystem ecology
  • Heat
  • Marine biology

Abstract

Marine macrophytes, including seagrasses and seaweeds, are major contributors to the marine carbon cycle through the release of dissolved organic carbon, a fraction of which is recalcitrant (resistant to microbial degradation for weeks to months), thereby supporting long-term carbon storage. Here we tested how warming and invasion by a non-native seagrass affect carbon dynamics in temperate macrophyte communities from southern Iberia using controlled mesocosm experiments across three temperatures. The invasive seagrass did not substantially alter carbon metabolism or dissolved organic carbon release. However, warming altered the amount and composition of released carbon. The recalcitrant fraction decreased by 28% with increasing temperature, while labile carbon (readily degradable) increased proportionally. When standardized to macrophyte carbon stocks, the recalcitrant fraction produced was comparable to sediment carbon burial rates in the same communities. These results suggest that warming restructures dissolved organic carbon composition, reducing coastal carbon storage capacity and affecting global carbon budget estimates.

Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during this study, including the source data used to generate the figures and charts, are publicly available in the Zenodo repository at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18861550.

Code availability

Custom R scripts used for data processing, statistical analyses and figure generation are available in the same Zenodo repository as the study datasets at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18861550.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been funded with a Humboldt postdoc fellowship to Pedro Beca-Carretero, by the projects FINOCAME (PCM_00104.C17.I03), project co-financed by the Department of University, Research and Innovation of the Regional Government of Andalusia and by the European Union through the Next Generation EU funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan; DAME (PDC2021-120792-100), funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the National Agency of Research, and the European Union (Next Generation EU Recovery Funds) Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan; and the SER-CADY project [FEDER-UCA18-107451], supported by the 2014–2020 ERDF Operational Programme and by the Department of Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge, and Universities of the Regional Government of Andalusia. Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno acknowledges a FPU grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Pedro Beca-Carretero acknowledges support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through a Humboldt Research Fellowship. Tomás Azcárate-García acknowledges a Severo Ochoa FPI predoctoral grant (PRE2020-096185) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence” Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) of Barcelona (CEX2019-000928-S). We thank the Marine Experimental Ecology (MAREE) team at the ZMT, as well as L. Saige Alloway, for their support in developing the mesocosm. We are also grateful to A. Romero-Sánchez for his help with preparing the diagrams included in this paper. Thanks to the Integration and Application Network for the courtesy of supplying the vector symbols (ian.umces.edu/symbols/). We also thank to the anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an early version of the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Fernando Guillermo Brun, Pedro Beca-Carretero.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Division of Ecology, Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cadiz, Puerto Real, Spain

    Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno, Luis Gonzalo Egea & Fernando Guillermo Brun

  2. Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography, Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Tomás Azcárate-García

  3. Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences & Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Tomás Azcárate-García

  4. Department of Oceanography, Institute of Marine Research (IIM-CSIC), Vigo, Spain

    Xosé Antón Álvarez-Salgado & Pedro Beca-Carretero

  5. Programme Area Ecosystem Co-Design towards a sustainable Anthropocene, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen, Germany

    Hauke Reuter & Pedro Beca-Carretero

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  1. Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno
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Contributions

Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - Original Draft Preparation, Writing - Review & Editing. Tomás Azcárate-García: Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - Review & Editing. Luis G. Egea: Funding Acquisition, Methodology, Validation, Writing - Review & Editing. Xosé Antón Álvarez-Salgado: Data Curation, Methodology, Validation, Writing - Review & Editing. Hauke Reuter: Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Writing - Review & Editing. Fernando G. Brun: Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing - Review & Editing. Pedro Beca-Carretero: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing - Original Draft Preparation, Writing - Review & Editing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Alba Yamuza-Magdaleno or Pedro Beca-Carretero.

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Communications Earth & Environment thanks Gloria Reithmaier and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Sophia Johannessen and Alice Drinkwater. A peer review file is available

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Yamuza-Magdaleno, A., Azcárate-García, T., Egea, L.G. et al. Temperature-driven decline in recalcitrant dissolved organic carbon weakens coastal macrophyte’s blue carbon storage potential. Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03417-y

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  • Received: 09 September 2025

  • Accepted: 09 March 2026

  • Published: 02 April 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03417-y

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