Eutrophication, Algal Bloom, Hypoxia and Ocean Acidification in Large River Estuaries

Estuaries are transitional regions of river freshwater to seawater, and biogeochemical parameters such as salinity, nutrients and biological parameters typically show strong gradients during freshwater and seawater mixing. Estuaries occupy a small portion of the global ocean area (about 0.2%), but they play a very important role for marine fisheries and contribute disproportionately to the global carbon budgets. Furthermore, estuaries are under strong anthropogenic pressures, such as eutrophication, wetland degradation, overfishing, and many estuaries’ ecosystems have dramatically changed under such anthropogenic pressures and climate change (e.g., hypoxia, ocean acidification and biodiversity decrease).

This Research Topic aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research on changes of estuarine ecosystems, with a particular focus on eutrophication, algal blooms, hypoxia and ocean acidification in the Yangtze and Mississippi River estuaries. The Yangtze River is the largest river in China and ranked third among world rivers in terms of discharge. In recent decades, the ecosystem of the Yangtze River estuary has been greatly changed by human influence over the last 50 years. While for the Mississippi River estuary such kinds of human influence happened 50 years ago. The purpose of this Research Topic is to depict the evolution process of estuarine ecosystems and to make a comparison of ecosystem response to different stages of anthropogenic influence.

This Research Topic will be focused mainly on the following themes, but are not limited to:
-Hydrodynamic processes
-Eutrophication
-Biodiversity
-Hypoxia
-Acidification