About this Research Topic

Background

The coastal ecosystems, such as mangroves, salt marshes, seagrasses, kelp forests, mud flats, and constructed wetlands are among the most globally important marine ecosystems providing irreplaceable socioeconomic value and ecological services. These ecosystems can also sequester and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon, which are known as "blue carbon" ecosystems. However, coastal pollution caused by pollutants (e.g., nutrients, heavy metals and organic pollutants) is a worldwide problem that is threatening the health and sustainability of these ecosystems, thus affecting blue carbon burial. Estuarine and coastal sediments can be both sinks and sources of pollutants due to the complex and dynamic environmental factors which influence the transport, transformation, and storage characteristics of sediment and porewater. In the context of global change and anthropogenic activities, understanding the biogeochemical cycles in sediment-porewater systems and materials’ exchange across the sediment and the overlying water interface through diffusion, convection, and bioturbation is therefore crucial for predicting the fate of chemicals and further assessing the environmental and ecological risks.

Estuarine and coastal sediments are featured by a high degree of spatial and temporal heterogeneity at a fine scale. Whether sediments act as a source or sink of different chemicals and the governing environmental factors are still controversial. The study of environmental processes (i.e., transport and transformation) that occur in the sediment-porewater/water interface relies on the development and application of high-resolution dissolved chemical-monitoring tools, such as diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT), diffusive equilibration in thin films (DET), dialysis (peeper), planar optode (PO) and microelectrode, etc. In recent years, these tools have been widely employed in sediment-water interface research in terrestrial aquatic ecosystems, while their application in estuaries and coasts is scarce and still under development. Given this, the goal of this Research Topic is to seek manuscripts that involve sediment-water interface processes, particularly high-resolution dissolved solutes monitoring studies in estuarine and coastal environments.

We invite researchers to submit papers in the field of sediment-porewater processes in coastal environments and ecosystems, which include dissolved solute exchange across the sediment-water interface in estuarine and coastal ecosystems. It calls for cutting-edge original research papers or comprehensive reviews including but not limited to the following research topics:

• Environmental behaviors and cycles of dissolved solutes (carbon, nutrients, heavy metals and organic pollutants) in surficial sediments

• The quantification of fluxes across the sediment-water interface induced by diffusion, convection and bioturbation

• High-resolution imaging of sediment-water interface processes based on field investigation, sediment incubation, and model simulation

• Novel methods and techniques for sediment-water interface research and flux assessment

• Effects of various environmental factors including physical, chemical and biological factors, on transport and transformation of dissolved solutes

• Response of sediment-water interface processes to global change and anthropogenic activities

Keywords: exchange flux, sediment-water interface, sediment porewater, biogeochemistry, coastal wetland, carbon cycle, nutrients, heavy metals

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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