Coastal estuaries and wetlands together with their vegetated intertidal ecosystems provide significant socio-economic, environmental, and cultural services. However, growing evidence suggests that climate change threatens these services by bringing about more frequent extreme events, loss of species, and undermined economic livelihoods. This is exacerbated by compounding anthropogenic drivers, including population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, and global food/water/energy demand, which are typically concentrated in coastal regions (e.g., 1 billion coastal inhabitants predicted in 2030). In this context, planning decisions and management considerations for coastal estuaries and wetlands that address climate change impacts require accurate numerical modelling tools that provide a thorough understanding of physical, geomorphic, and biogeochemical processes and how they respond to climate change interconnectedly, as well as offer options for adaptive-mitigative measures and conservative-restorative practices. This information would then help provide research and policy guidance for devising effective risk management efforts in coastal areas, design collective environmental strategies, and identify knowledge and administration requirements for the way forward.
Coastal estuaries and wetlands together with their vegetated intertidal ecosystems provide significant socio-economic, environmental, and cultural services. However, growing evidence suggests that climate change threatens these services by bringing about more frequent extreme events, loss of species, and undermined economic livelihoods. This is exacerbated by compounding anthropogenic drivers, including population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, and global food/water/energy demand, which are typically concentrated in coastal regions (e.g., 1 billion coastal inhabitants predicted in 2030). In this context, planning decisions and management considerations for coastal estuaries and wetlands that address climate change impacts require accurate numerical modelling tools that provide a thorough understanding of physical, geomorphic, and biogeochemical processes and how they respond to climate change interconnectedly, as well as offer options for adaptive-mitigative measures and conservative-restorative practices. This information would then help provide research and policy guidance for devising effective risk management efforts in coastal areas, design collective environmental strategies, and identify knowledge and administration requirements for the way forward.
Evidence-based management of coastal estuaries and wetlands requires comprehensive knowledge of interlinked pathways between climatic changes (e.g., sea-level rise, rising temperature, salinisation, altered volume/timing of catchment inflows), other human-induced effects (e.g., land use change, extractions), and complex physical, ecological, and biogeochemical processes (e.g., nutrient and sediment dynamics) at a catchment-wide scale. However, decision-making procedures for these valuable environments is rarely based on detailed whole-of-system assessments that is further compounded by the dynamic relationship between variables within an estuary over space and time. As such, future research on coastal estuaries and wetlands is recommended to account for interactions and complex feedback loops between hydrodynamics, biogeomorphic conditions, water quality, and intertidal vegetation communities, in addition to anthropogenic developmental pressures.
We invite researchers to contribute original research, systematic (or mini) reviews, methods, and perspectives that advance our understanding of climate change cumulative impacts on coastal estuaries and wetlands worldwide. There is considerable scope to address future estuary management challenges around altered hydrodynamics, water quality, ecosystem stability and blue carbon habitat restoration, in addition to the data required to build better numerical models. This Research Topic calls for any of the following topics, but are not limited to:
• Advanced modelling of integrated climate change impacts
• Uncertainty assessment approaches for large model domains
• Compound flooding and extreme events
• Eco-morphodynamics
• Process-based modelling linking hydrodynamics and ecological responses
• Accurately representing microbial processes throughout an entire waterway
• Catchment-wide management approaches to address waterway eutrophication
• Ecosystem restoration, including tidal restoration of blue carbon habitats
• Economic assessments of climate change impacts and habitat restoration
• Data analysis and machine learning techniques
• Food-water-energy security
Coastal estuaries and wetlands together with their vegetated intertidal ecosystems provide significant socio-economic, environmental, and cultural services. However, growing evidence suggests that climate change threatens these services by bringing about more frequent extreme events, loss of species, and undermined economic livelihoods. This is exacerbated by compounding anthropogenic drivers, including population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, and global food/water/energy demand, which are typically concentrated in coastal regions (e.g., 1 billion coastal inhabitants predicted in 2030). In this context, planning decisions and management considerations for coastal estuaries and wetlands that address climate change impacts require accurate numerical modelling tools that provide a thorough understanding of physical, geomorphic, and biogeochemical processes and how they respond to climate change interconnectedly, as well as offer options for adaptive-mitigative measures and conservative-restorative practices. This information would then help provide research and policy guidance for devising effective risk management efforts in coastal areas, design collective environmental strategies, and identify knowledge and administration requirements for the way forward.
Coastal estuaries and wetlands together with their vegetated intertidal ecosystems provide significant socio-economic, environmental, and cultural services. However, growing evidence suggests that climate change threatens these services by bringing about more frequent extreme events, loss of species, and undermined economic livelihoods. This is exacerbated by compounding anthropogenic drivers, including population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, and global food/water/energy demand, which are typically concentrated in coastal regions (e.g., 1 billion coastal inhabitants predicted in 2030). In this context, planning decisions and management considerations for coastal estuaries and wetlands that address climate change impacts require accurate numerical modelling tools that provide a thorough understanding of physical, geomorphic, and biogeochemical processes and how they respond to climate change interconnectedly, as well as offer options for adaptive-mitigative measures and conservative-restorative practices. This information would then help provide research and policy guidance for devising effective risk management efforts in coastal areas, design collective environmental strategies, and identify knowledge and administration requirements for the way forward.
Evidence-based management of coastal estuaries and wetlands requires comprehensive knowledge of interlinked pathways between climatic changes (e.g., sea-level rise, rising temperature, salinisation, altered volume/timing of catchment inflows), other human-induced effects (e.g., land use change, extractions), and complex physical, ecological, and biogeochemical processes (e.g., nutrient and sediment dynamics) at a catchment-wide scale. However, decision-making procedures for these valuable environments is rarely based on detailed whole-of-system assessments that is further compounded by the dynamic relationship between variables within an estuary over space and time. As such, future research on coastal estuaries and wetlands is recommended to account for interactions and complex feedback loops between hydrodynamics, biogeomorphic conditions, water quality, and intertidal vegetation communities, in addition to anthropogenic developmental pressures.
We invite researchers to contribute original research, systematic (or mini) reviews, methods, and perspectives that advance our understanding of climate change cumulative impacts on coastal estuaries and wetlands worldwide. There is considerable scope to address future estuary management challenges around altered hydrodynamics, water quality, ecosystem stability and blue carbon habitat restoration, in addition to the data required to build better numerical models. This Research Topic calls for any of the following topics, but are not limited to:
• Advanced modelling of integrated climate change impacts
• Uncertainty assessment approaches for large model domains
• Compound flooding and extreme events
• Eco-morphodynamics
• Process-based modelling linking hydrodynamics and ecological responses
• Accurately representing microbial processes throughout an entire waterway
• Catchment-wide management approaches to address waterway eutrophication
• Ecosystem restoration, including tidal restoration of blue carbon habitats
• Economic assessments of climate change impacts and habitat restoration
• Data analysis and machine learning techniques
• Food-water-energy security
