About this Research Topic

Background

Estuaries are characterized by high species diversity and act as nursery areas for many fish species, and they are considered to be among the most productive ecosystems in the world. However, in the past decades, multiple stressors, including overfishing, pollution, degradation of water quality, and anthropogenic climate change, have jointly deteriorated the health and ecology of the estuarine ecosystems and hence threatened fishery resources and fishery biodiversity in estuarine areas.

Understanding changes in estuarine fishery ecosystems, providing a historical perspective of the abundance and distribution of fishery communities and main target species in estuaries, and exploring the main factors that drove these changes, are the basis for the sustainability development of estuarine fisheries in the future.

This research topic is used to provide an overview of changes in estuarine fishery ecosystems under multiple stressors and highlight changes in fishery communities and various fishery species in estuaries over recent decades.

The focus of this Research Topic is on studies that use ecological or other methods, to explore how estuarine fishery ecosystems respond to environmental changes. It calls for original and novel papers on any of the following research topics:

1. Changes in estuarine fishery ecosystems and food webs.

2. Abundance, distribution, and potential of fishery resources in estuaries, especially in a long-term time series.

3. The impacts of fishing activities, climate change and other environmental stressors on estuarine fishery ecosystems and fishery resources

4. The role and impact of management strategies on sustainable development of estuarine fishery ecosystems.

Keywords: estuary, fishery ecosystem, multiple stressors, biodiversity conservation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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