Every July 26 is World Mangrove Day, and July 26 to August 1 is Nitrate Pollution Awareness Week. World Mangrove Day, officially known as the UN International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem, is a global campaign established by UNESCO in 2015 for protecting and restoring the special mangrove ecosystems around the world. Nitrate Pollution Awareness Week, on the other hand, is a nationwide initiative focusing on raising awareness of nitrate contamination specifically in water environment, its health and environmental impacts across water bodies and their ecosystems in the United States.
Blue carbon ecosystems especially mangrove forests provide vital eco-services including shoreline protection, carbon storage, water filtration, and aquatic/marine nurseries. These unique shoreline and/or intertidal ecosystems safeguard shorelines, sequence carbon, support global fisheries, and filter shoreline water. The ecoservices could be compromised by nitrate pollution. The well-known case of nitrate pollution has been the frequent disasters of “dead zone” by the estuary of the Mississippi River at Gulf of Mexico, caused by agricultural fertilizers, urban runoff, and wastewater with rich nitrates and nutrients that trigger huge algae blooms that decompose and suffocate coastal ecosystems and marine life. I’ve lectured on the subjects of blue carbon ecosystems and dead zone disasters in several universities, both locally and overseas, and their interactions.
In light of both awareness campaigns being observed on the same time, and interactive in nature that has to do with water quality, public health and shoreline ecosystems, CIEDM as a grassroots is timely engaging a grassroots campaign to support and take part in both international and national campaigns and to raise awareness of the needs for protecting and restoring blue carbon ecosystems, including shoreline mangrove forests. The CIEDM campaign is kicked off on July 26 and will be concluded
on August 1.
We’ve offered online several SME, or subject matter expert, comments to postings about the two awareness campaigns, mainly on social media such as Facebook. We have spread the postings and shared our comments to raise public awareness of significances of the two campaigns and to encourage participation. In addition, we are engaging a cleanup of the Ocean Friendly Garden at the Arcadia Ecohome Microforest in order to reduce stormwater pollution to local waterways, shorelines and the Pacific Ocean at the end of waterways.
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