Blue Carbon Capital Mapping For Oceans for all and Panwa Pullman hotel.

OVERVIEW

Coastal Hotels across Thailand are beginning to recognise the combined value of fragmented and depleted blue carbon ecosystem’s within the boundary of their complex’s. Simple changes in land management practices and a joined-up approach across an entire site can create rich natural resources which provide numerous benefits for the local community.

Blue carbon habitats create a wealth of different ecosystem services, from flood mitigation to food sources. Plants clean polluted air and water. Animals enrich our enjoyment of natural spaces and stabilise ecosystem health. But many of these benefits are lost when Blue carbon ecosystems are degraded.

Beyond these benefits of boosting biodiversity, many hotels are now pledging to address the climate crisis. Best practice is to start on hotel practices rather than offsetting elsewhere – tackling emissions and sequestering more carbon by making changes within the hotel complex. This may include planting seagrass or mangroves, mitigating harmful hotel operating practices, increasing green space and reducing car use by increasing provision of electric vehicles. But there are risks to doing this poorly – well-designed blue carbon restoration projects with expert input can avoid degradation and reverse the world wide trend of seagrass and mangrove loss.

PROJECT BRIEF

We partnered with drone mapping experts, PK DRONE, to create a detailed Level 5 habitat maps of the hotel’s blue carbon environment. We also quantified the carbon storage, pollutant treatment, runoff reduction and other ecosystem services provided by the bay adjacent to the Pullman Panwa hotel .

To understand the potential of biodiversity enhancement interventions in Panwa, we combined the habitat mapping work with more sophisticated modelling techniques. This allowed us to identify core and peripheral habitat zones; connected networks of habitats (and how these were isolated from each other within the ecosystem), soil type, and how these networks varied by habitat type (aquatic, mangrove, seagrass etc).

The models were used to create a map of areas where cost effective interventions, with the creation of appropriate habitat, would dramatically boost local biodiversity by connecting fragmented ecosystems across the bay area or expand core areas supporting healthy and abundant communities of organisms.

We also modeled the cost of planting seagrass across the entire ecosystem, factoring in the existing areas in impact from tourists and grey water systems, subject to high turbidity, and a number of other variables to identify cost-effective opportunities for blue carbon restoration and maintenance.

Two scenarios were created – A was a minimal mono species mitigation plan, which reduced the hotels impact upon the existing blue carbon ecosystem with the goal of stabilising the ecosystem and identifying areas to repopulate blue carbon sustainably

B was intended to mitigate impact and using a multi species model test plant (mangrove and seagrass) within the ecosystem, record survival rates and increase of carbon sequestration.

YEAR

2020 - 2023

IMPACT

Biodiversity

Regular surveys of biodiveristy within the ecosystem where conducted at the site. Measuring “bucket weight” catch from individuals who regularly forage across the area.

Habitats

Cataloguing the existing habitats in detail allows the hotel to identify opportunities for habitat extension, protection.

People

The aims of this project are to deliver social value, in the form of pollution mitigation, reduction of sediment erosion and a more pleasant area for guests to visist