Sediment inorganic carbon (PIC) deposits in seagrass meadows and adjacent sand-patches

The database compiles published and unpublished data on carbonate (CaCO3) and/or particulate inorganic carbon (PIC) along with particulate organic carbon (POC) stocks if available, in sediments of seagrass meadows and adjacent un-vegetated patches. We considered the total pool of CaCO3 reported without distinguishing between the different biogenic carbonate mineral forms (calcite, Mg-calcite and aragonite). Fourqurean et al. (2012) provided data for 201 sites, and a literature search using both the Web of Knowledge (using the search terms “seagrass*” AND “inorganic carbon*” AND [“calcific* OR sediment* OR CaCO3 OR dissolut* OR diagenesis”]) and Google Scholar (using the search terms “seagrass carbonate”) yielded data for an additional 82 sites. The database was amended with unpublished values for 154 additional sites sampled by the authors. The database compiles data on sediment carbonate concentration for a total of 437 sites, of which 34 corresponded to sand patches adjacent to seagrass meadows. The final database comprises estimates for 403 seagrass vegetated sites, including 219 estimates for sediment surface samples (ca. 1-30 cm depth) and 184 estimates for sediment cores of variable length (149 cores < 100 cm-long, and 35 cores ≥ 100 cm-long). When only one of the variables, CaCO3 or PIC was reported, the other was estimated assuming that PIC is 12% of the total molar mass of the CaCO3. In most cases, particulate inorganic and organic carbon (PIC and POC) were reported as a percentage of dry weight (%DW), where PIC and POC, in mg cm-3, was calculated as the product of the fraction of sediment dry weight composed by PIC or POC and the dry bulk density (DBD) of a given sediment section (n = 340 sites). When DBD was not reported (n = 113 sites), we used the average DBD (1.03 g cm-3) reported by Fourqurean et al. (2012) for seagrass sediments in the calculations. Enquiries about the dabaset may be sent to Ines Mazarrasa .