Biodiversity-Centered Blue Carbon Management in Vegetated Coastal Wetlands: A Review of Conservation, Restoration, Monitoring, and Climate Adaptation Across Mangroves, Seagrass Beds, and Salt Marshes

Vegetated coastal wetlands, especially mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marshes, are biodiversity-rich ecosystems whose blue carbon outcomes depend on living communities, sediment dynamics, hydrological connectivity, and landscape context. Biodiversity conservation and blue carbon management are often assessed through separate scientific, monitoring, and policy frameworks. This review uses a staged literature search and thematic synthesis to examine biodiversity–blue carbon linkages across the three major vegetated coastal wetland types. It considers how taxonomic, genetic, functional, and habitat diversity influence productivity, sediment stabilization, trophic exchange, carbon stocks, carbon burial, and carbon retention. It also evaluates how climate change, habitat fragmentation, hydrological alteration, pollution, and anthropogenic disturbance weaken these linkages. The synthesis compares representative carbon-stock and burial-rate baselines, examines conservation and restoration synergies and trade-offs, and expands the discussion of seagrass regime shifts. Field surveys, remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, environmental DNA, and AI-enabled data integration are placed within a tiered monitoring framework. The review further develops an operational decision pathway for biodiversity-centered blue carbon management. Persistent blue carbon benefits arise where conservation and restoration maintain native communities, hydrological exchange, sediment stability, habitat complexity, migration space, and long-term stewardship capacity.